Are you a person with a television? Does your cable package include premium channels? If so, you probably watched the season premiere of “Game of Thrones” on Sunday night.
Thrones returned to 3.9 million viewers. That’s up a massive 74 percent from its series debut last year. It also greatly improves upon the show’s previous all-time high, which was just over 3 million viewers. Including all three Sunday airings, the show delivered 6.3 million viewers. The numbers mean a third season renewal is pretty much guaranteed (and also dissolves any concerns that last season’s killing of popular characters would result in a dip). [EW]
Not only was the near four million viewers an all-time high for the show, it was also a full million more than “Mad Men” pulled in (and over two million more than “The Killing”), despite the fact that AMC reaches substantially more homes than HBO. This is excellent news for fans of the show, because, as the blockquote indicates, it all but guarantees HBO will renew it at some point this afternoon (the only question is whether it will get picked up for one season or two). As long as they stay committed to things like strong plot structure, breathtaking cinematography, gratuitous nudity and bloodshed, and main characters slapping Joffrey in the face once a season at minimum, I support this development wholeheartedly.
