A ‘True’ Hit for HBO- New York Times

says the same thing as the other articles but this is from the New York Times

A ‘True’ Hit for HBO
By Bill Carter

HBO’s long search for a post-“Sopranos” popular hit may be over.

The season premiere of the pay channel’s vampire series, “True Blood,” attracted the largest audience for HBO since the “Sopranos” finale two years ago.

HBO ran the show twice Sunday night to help make it easy for fans to come back to the show, once at 9 p.m., once at 11. (The first episode will have more runs throughout the week.)

The combined audience was 5.1 million. That is not exactly near the 11.9 million who watched the “Sopranos” finale, but nothing on HBO since has hit a number like that.

The channel also pointed out that the first-night audience for “True Blood” had grown more than 50 percent from the finale of season one, a sign that more viewers are coming to the series. Another sign HBO pointed to was that DVD sales of the first season of “True Blood” have made it to the top of the DVD list at Amazon.com.