The Showtime drama Weeds has set some records with their third season debut, according to Variety. Last nights opener saw a 43% increase over the second season premier, though these numbers are extremely small given the nature of pay-cable shows, apparently this is still really great news.

The David Duchovny series that got a link from me yesterday didn't do so well, bringing in 550k viewers. I find it hard to adjust my expectations for pay-cable when I'm so used to regular cable and broadcast network ratings. For instance, two million is considered really good for a show on something like TNT or the Scifi Channel. On broadcast, you'd want at least seven million for a low budget show, maybe 10-11 for something like Heroes. To then think about 800k as a great number kind of brings into focus what it means to live on pay-channels, and you can really appreciate how bad people running those shows want more eyeballs.

Hit the link above to see the full digs on the ratings for the two shows. I'll leave it to others more educated on ratings than I am to pontificate about what they mean.

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