On Sunday night my favorite TV show Mad Men ended its third season. It was a terrific finale and I recommend watching it if you haven’t done so already. The episode’s initial airing had an average audience of 2.3 million, about 31% more than last season’s finale, and the highest audience the show has had since this season’s premiere that drew 2.8 million.

On average this season, Mad Men had about 20% more viewers. Last season the show grew 62% season over season, indicating that the program’s audience might be topping out.

Unfortunately I don’t have the average season numbers for the 18-49 demographic, so it’s not possible to draw a similar theories about audience growth in this segment, but looking the 25-54 demo there was only an 8% growth this season. Maybe the audience is indeed plateauing.

These numbers, particularly the season averages, might be misleading. Notice how across all demos, both the premieres and the season finales draw much higher audiences and growth rates. This is logical since audiences are much more interested in not only watching the first and last episode of a show, but are also more likely to see it live. Since these ratings are “Live plus Same Day” (Live+SD) for just the initial episode airings, it is theoretically possible that the viewership is higher for the numbers represented in the season average, once accounted for time-shifted viewing on DVRs or through VOD services, or for viewings of other airings. In other words, I bet that the relative difference in between Premiere/Finales and “in-between” episodes is much higher in Live+SD than in Live+7.

UPDATE: According to a recent MediaWeek article, Mad Men overindexes in C3 ratings, indicating that the show’s audience does lean toward timeshifted viewing. This lends more weight to my theory that the audience for “in-between” was probably more even with premieres and finales, once total viewing was accounted for.

In any case, while Mad Men is a very successful and highly admire show, compared to other basic cable shows it is below par in terms of ratings. This finale audience of 2.8 million wouldn’t place it in the Top 25 cable shows. AMC is rightfully promoting that Mad Men is “the most upscale drama in basic cable, with 50% of that demo having household income in excess of $100,000.” A similar pitch was mentioned at the conclusion of last season.