HBO’s “House of the Dragon” is heating up with lots of death and destruction.

But the ratings are not as incendiary as the show.

Sunday’s episode was slightly down from the previous week, with 1.2 million viewers. The key demo remained the same.

On linear HBO, “Dragon” has shed 100,000 viewers totally since its second season debut five weeks ago.

What else can they do? A dragon musical? For some reason, “Dragon” is not lighting any fires ratings wise, although it’s doing a lot better than most cable series. We’re still waiting for viewers to catch up on all the episodes.

UPDATE A publicist for the movie writes: “Bette Midler couldn’t make tonight’s special screening due to previous commitments out of the country not for any other reason. We’d known about these committments since the beginning of our campaign, which is why we did full days of press with her before she left.”

Where is Bette? She couldn’t change her schedule to promote her film? She doesn’t make that many these days.

EARLIER

The invite for tonight’s screening of “The Fabulous Four” is very specific: Join Susan Sarandon and Sheryl Lee Ralph for the show and a reception.

Not on the invite: Bette Midler, who lives in New York and ordinarily wouldn’t miss the premiere of a film in which she’s the central character.

But as I told you one month ago, we will not be seeing Midler and Sarandon in the same room together.

Since they made the comedy, October 7th happened. Sarandon went full pro-Palestine, even insisting in public speeches that the violence against Jews that day at a music festival didn’t happen.

Midler is Jewish, and pro-Israel. Everything Sarandon has said is untrue and off base. I can’t imagine Midler has any desire to deal with her in any venue.

Sarandon, in fact, has lost her agent and manager over her ridiculous comments. She’s never once mentioned the Jews who were killed or the hostages taken.

Interesting fact: in the last two weeks Sarandon has cooled it on Instagram with the crazy rhetoric. I imagine she’s been asked to do that so that the audience is scared off the film.

Midler, meantime, already gave a big interview on The Today Show last week, by herself. That may be the last we see of her on the PR trail. The movie opens next Thursday night, July 25th.

Here’s my story from June 17th:

Fabulous Four or Fantastic Flop? Susan Sarandon’s Political Views Could Sink New Summer Comedy with Bette Midler

Watching the Republican National Convention?

Nope. That’s the answer for everyone but Fox News viewers. The convention has been of little interest in TV land.

On Tuesday night, the three major networks averaged 2 million viewers apiece for the RNC at 10pm.

Ironically, the MLB All Star Game — shown on Fox TV stations — picked up 4.63 million viewers.

The only numbers for the RNC are on Fox News, and they’re sinking night by night. Between Monday and Tuesday, Fox News lost 1 million viewers. Only about 5.5 million tuned in Tuesday night to see the rogues gallery of anti-Americans give their spiels.

Last night’s numbers will be in soon.

Tonight is the big RNC finale. Trump will appear on stage with a white Kotex bandage on his ear, and talk about getting shot, and Biden being too old. He won’t mention his own 34 felony convictions, or how he killed 1 million Americans during COVID.

By the way, the American League beat the National League 5 to 3.