TNT’s two Wednesday night summer drama series, ‘Franklin & Bash’ and ‘Men of a Certain Age,’ have started off to a slow start with weak ratings, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Only 2.75 million viewers tuned into the series premiere of ‘Franklin & Bash,’ a new legal series starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyers, at 9 pm on June 1, 2011. That’s down almost 5 million viewers from Gosselaar’s last TNT legal drama, ‘Raising the Bar,’ which debuted to 7.7 million viewers on September 1 2008, the biggest new-series launch on basic cable ever.

The ‘Franklin & Bash’ premiere attracted 554,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 34, 1.15 million adults in the coveted 18-49 demographic and 1.22 million adult viewers between the ages of 25 and 54. The number of people who watched the pilot was only half of the average number of people who tuned to the majority of the series run of ‘Raising the Bar.’

Meanwhile, ‘Men of a Certain Age,’ whose first season recently premiered on the ION network in May 2011, only drew in 1.85 million viewers for its third season premiere on TNT. Airing immediately after ‘Franklin & Bash’ at 10 pm, the Ray Romano dramedy series averaged 591,000 viewers among adults 18-49, and 825,000 among the 25-54 demo.

‘Men of a Certain Age’s third season premiere saw a decline of over half-a-million viewers from the second season premiere, which debuted on December 6, 2010 to an audience of 2.4 million people. The second season premiere was down 3 million viewers from the pilot episode, which debuted to an audience of 5.4 million people on December 7, 2009.

Written by: Karen Benardello