Despite the kind of publicity and hysteria usually reserved for big-budget summer films, Lena Dunham’s HBO dramedy “Girls” earned its worst premiere ratings to date with a paltry (even for “Girls”) 680,000 viewers.
By comparison, season 3 debuted to 1.1 million viewers. That’s nearly a 40% drop this year. In the all-important 18-49 age demo, “Girls” pulled only 390,000 viewers, a dip of 35%. Things are moving in the wrong direction — the season 3 premiere was a 28% improvement over the season 2 premiere.