Downton Abbey said goodbye to an estimated 9.6 million viewers on Sunday night, lowering the curtain on PBS’ most successful series in ages with its fourth most-watched episode.
Only the premiere episodes of the last three seasons had larger audiences, topped by the 10.2 million in 2014, the Nielsen company said. The numbers will rise when time-shifted viewing is taken into account; the 2014 season premiere reached 15.5 million viewers after a month.
“These six seasons of Downton Abbey have truly been a fantastic ride for all of us in the public television family,” said Paula Kerger, PBS president and CEO.
The household help on Downton Abbey proved no match for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as television stars. Fox News Channel’s telecast of last Thursday’s GOP presidential debate was the week’s most-watched program with just under 17 million viewers.
Fox News had the unusual achievement of beating Fox’s broadcast network in the weekly ratings, Nielsen said.