Do you have any links or citations for a number even close to that? It’s live viewership numbers are lower than current HBO shows like Westworld that don’t overall get 30M viewers per episode.
Or did you have a different meaning for 30M than per episode? Usually that’s what people mean for tv so I am assuming that.
According to wikipedia the peak viewing for individual episodes is about 4m. Although it's not a stretch to assume it reached a lot more people than that via legal streaming services and illegal downloads.
It was not incredibly popular during it's time on the air. This is part of the reason for multi-year gaps between seasons. It has become somewhat of a post-airing success / cult classic.
And DVDs (this is a 15-10 year old series). Plus the recent re-release on BluRay.
Apparently, Still not enough to get an Emmy. I lost my faith on Emmy's because of that.