‘The Walking Dead’ Season Premiere Ratings Were Down For The First Time Ever

The series premiere of The Walking Dead was seen by 5.35 million viewers. That was a huge, record-breaking win for AMC at the time; now, it would be an outright embarrassment. Look at what the zombie series has done since.

Season two premiere: 7.26 million.
Season three premiere: 10.87 million.
Season four premiere: 16.11 million.
Season five premiere: 17.29 million.

Ratings have dramatically increased every year, until this one. Competing against Sunday Night Football, the MLB playoffs, and, um, The Leftovers, Sunday’s season six premiere, “First Time Again,” only pulled in 14.63 million viewers. Well, “only.” That’s still a huge number, and Variety notes “its 7.4 rating in 18-49 also exceeds all broadcast entertainment telecasts since the start of the TV season on Sept. 21, beating the premiere of Empire by 10 percent.”

AMC will release “live plus-3” ratings information on Friday for Sunday’s Dead premiere, which could garner larger percentage gains than usual due to its expanded 90-minute running time. On social media, TWD was mentioned in nearly 1 million tweets Sunday (956,480), generating 3.6 billion potential impressions via 825,000 unique users. It was also the No. 1 show Sunday on Facebook. (Via)

It’s premature to suggest that the zombie bubble has burst, or that AMC is saturating the market, but TWD‘s ratings are worth keeping an eye on. Last season’s second episode dipped by two million, followed by another million and a half for episode three, but then things stabilized, as they often do. By the end of this season, when The Walking Dead pulls in 31 million people because Daryl and Rick finally kiss, AMC executives will look back at the premiere ratings, laugh, and roll around in a pile of money and zombie guts.

(Via Variety)

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