New Outlander season 3 ratings analysis, more series records broken

When we posted our preliminary Outlander season 3 ratings piece at CarterMatt early Thursday morning, we promised that we would have more information soon. Today, we’re happy to provide just that.

Thanks to a new release sent to us from Starz, we can break down the show’s premiere numbers beyond just the series record-breaking 1.49 million who watched the first episode “The Battle Joined” live. The first thing to point out here is a major caveat from Sunday night: Hurricane Irma. That obviously impacted viewership, but by how much? Starz estimates that had those markets been able to tune in, and had they followed viewing patterns from the past, the premiere audience may have been closer to the 1.68 million who watched the Power season 4 premiere this summer. The fact that it was the most-watched episode of the series to date even with the hurricane in mind is all the more impressive.

Also impressive? Over the course of Sunday night the premiere, including repeats, drew 2.09 million live+same-day viewership. That is the largest single-day viewership for the show ever, beating out “The Wedding” from season 1 (2.04 million). There was plenty of other competition on Sunday, as well, whether it be NFL football, The Deuce, or Ray Donovan over on Showtime. For the record, the aforementioned 2.09 million for just Starz-only viewings of the Outlander premiere was close to the 2.2 million multi-platform viewers for The Deuce. (Multi-platform effectively means streaming/on-demand viewers i.e. people watching beyond traditional means.) With those included, the show almost surely blows The Deuce out of the water.

The Starz release also offered up a little more information about specific demographic victories, so let’s quote here:

“Additional premiere episode series-high viewership records achieved were with women: W18+ (948K) and W35+ (899K), and adults ages 50 and over: P50+ (1.05M). These series-high benchmarks represent gains versus the second season premiere of Outlander of 8% for W18+ (878K), 13% for W35+ (799K), and P50+ 15% (911K). The viewership performance with women 35+ and adults 50+ puts this episode of Outlander as the most watched scripted series in all premium pay TV in 2017, behind only Game of Thrones, and are all-time highs at Starz.”

In unpacking this information, the summation here is that Starz is winning enormously with women at the moment, and they are also drawing large audiences of older viewers. In between this show, Power earlier this summer, and American Gods in the spring, they are showing a tremendous knack for being able to reach a wide array of different audiences and appeal to many different sensibilities. This is hugely significant for establishing a large viewership base; they are a subscriber-based network, and if they can find a way to keep people around for longer than a few months at a time Starz will be set up extremely well for whatever programming that they have coming in the future.

At some point later this season, we hope to have a little bit more when it comes to some of the multi-platform views. After all, we know that there are many readers of CarterMatt alone who did not wait until 8:00 p.m. Eastern in order to watch the show live on TV.

Want more Outlander news?

Then head over here to see our latest episode 2 photo analysis piece! (Photo: Starz.)