‘Fear the Walking Dead’ shatters cable records as most-watched series premiere in history
Cable TV has a new champion when it comes to most-watched series premiere ever, and its name is “Fear the Walking Dead.” AMC’s new companion series to its primetime hit “The Walking Dead” drew around 10.1 million viewers in its first episode, and to go along with that the show had a 4.9 rating in the 18-49 demographic. These numbers, if they hold up, will make the show easily the #1 series of the summer across all networks, and also would rival almost anything on network TV during the fall / spring other than “Empire.”
In a statement, it’s easy to say that AMC / SundanceTV head Charlie Collier was more than just a little bit happy:
“Thank you and congratulations to Robert Kirkman, Dave Erickson, the brilliant executive producers and the entire cast and crew of ‘Fear the Walking Dead.’ It is increasingly difficult to evaluate a show’s success on night one. However, we are releasing these live/same day ratings because ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ delivered record-breaking numbers that are all the more special in this era of time-shifted viewing and audience fragmentation. To have a companion series to the #1 show on television driving communal, urgent viewing, social activity and pop cultural relevance of this magnitude is truly differentiating. Of course none of it is possible without the fans, whose passion leads to these remarkable results.”
We personally think the show outperformed our expectations, which were for it to premiere around the same level as the “Walking Dead” series premiere (which premiered with slightly more than 5 million viewers). After all, that show had the comic books backing it up, while this is based on new material and it could’ve been a situation where many die-hard fans decided that they would rather just have the original and not give this much of a chance.
We do anticipate numbers sliding a little bit throughout the season, but it now feels like a no-brainer that AMC renewed the show early for a second season.
If you missed it, our review of the “Fear the Walking Dead” series premiere is over at the link here. Also, be sure to sign up if you want to grab even more TV updates on everything we cover, sent right over in your direction via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: AMC.)