HBO‘s Boardwalk Empire delivered 2 million viewers Sunday night at 9 PM — up 6% week over week, and cumed 2.6 million for the night across its two plays. At 10 PM, Eastbound & Down‘s fourth–season debut clocked 700,000 viewers and 1.1 million across two plays. The unveiling of Hello Ladies scored 552,000 viewers at 10:30 PM, and 800,000 viewers for the night. The HBO series faced stiff competition from AMC. Its Breaking Bad series finale went out with a bang Sunday night, clocking 10.3 million viewers – a record for the AMC series. The finale skyrocketed 300% over last year’s finale in the demo, capping a historic run for the basic cable network. After that, an expanded Talking Bad delivered 4.4 million viewers. HBO’s series also had come up against the return of Showtime’s Homeland and launch of highly hyped Masters Of Sex. Homeland, opposite Boardwalk, had clocked 1.9 million viewers. That was up 9% from last fall’s Season 2 opener for the series’ most watched premiere yet. Following Homeland, the debut of Showtime’s new drama series Masters Of Sex drew 1 million viewers at 10 PM (1.4 million for the night). It tied the series premiere of Homeland as the second-biggest debut for a Showtime series behind this summer’s Ray Donovan (1.35 million), which had a larger lead-in (2.5 million, Dexter).

Early last month, Boardwalk Empire returned to HBO for its fourth season, against the start of NBC’s Sunday football season, with 2.4 million viewers — down from the 2.9 million who watched the Season 3 opener on September 16, 2012 at 9 PM — and 3.2 million viewers across the night. Season 3’s debut had cumed 4.6 million viewers on its opening night.