'Power' Starts Final Season With Strong Ratings

The Starz drama opens on par with last season's debut, and aftershow 'Power Confidential' also draws a decent-size audience.


Power began its final season on Starz with solid ratings, with linear numbers on par with the show's premiere a year ago.


The drama delivered 1.47 million viewers for its initial airing Sunday — slightly below the 1.55 million who watched the season five premiere in July 2018. Replays pushed the Sunday-night total to 2.3 million viewers.


The 1.47 million is the biggest on-air debut for a premium cable series this summer, surpassing the 1.42 million for Big Little Lies in June. Including replays and streaming, the HBO show gathered 2.5 million viewers on its first night; streaming figures for Power weren't available at publication time but are likely to put the show at or above 2.5 million.


Starz does say, however, that viewership on the Starz app rose 40 percent Sunday compared with Power's premiere day in 2018.


The debut of aftershow Power Confidential also put up decent ratings, with 793,000 people tuning in for discussion of the season premiere. The show featured castmember Lela Loren, writer Andre Ferguson and executive producer Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson.


Season five of Power averaged 10.8 million multiplatform viewers, nearly eight times the show's average of 1.36 million for initial airings.