Will Sam Levinson be able to repeat his HBO success with The Idol? According to HBO, the series launched to 913,000 total viewers across
Max and linear HBO telecasts on Sunday night. This is a great start for The Idol, and viewership is sure to increase over the next week as discussion
over the rather contentious series continues ahead of Episode 2. According to HBO, new episodes of a series typically attract 10%-20% of total viewership on Sunday nights,
implying that The Idol will likely average several million viewers, at least for the first episode.
Having said that, the series, which stars Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp,
didn't quite match the premiere ratings for Levinson's first HBO smash, Euphoria. With a bit of a lead-in from a Season 2 episode of Big Little Lies,
that series drew 1.1 million viewers on its launch night in 2019. Euphoria had a 6.6M average episodic audience by the end of Season 1.
However, premiere audiences do not always predict the audience with which a season will end.