Ratings: ‘Game of Thrones’ season 3 slips even without ‘Walking Dead’ competition

Sometimes, even conventional wisdom can be proven wrong, and for the latest example of this you don’t really have to look any further than the recent “Game of Thrones” ratings.

After the season 3 premiere set a new peak with 4.4 million viewers tuning in, we expected the second episode to rise yet again. Why? The show did not have to worry about massive competition from “The Walking Dead,” and it was assumed that the new series were not going to share common ground when it comes to their audience.

Instead, this episode drew 4.27 million viewers, and also a 2.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic that is very impressive (albeit irrelevant for HBO, given that they do not have advertisers who care about the people watching the show). The reality is that while this number surprises us in some wasy, there are more than ten million people who watch this show weekly via HBO’s other channels, repeat viewers, and streams on their HBO GO service. It’s one of the best examples of how a series can dominate without having a “Walking Dead”-esque live audience tuning in.

However, we do continually wonder just how high the level of frustration is for the network when it comes to the number of people checking out the show by less-than-desired means. While there must be some hope that at least some of these people will later buy the DVD, this show was revealed to be the most-pirated series of 2012 by a pretty wide margin. We could sit here and emphasize that this is a show worth paying for (because it is), but it’s hard to say whether or not anyone would listen.

Are you surprised that the “Game of Thrones” ratings did not go up for the live viewing, and do you think there is anything HBO can do about the millions of people watching this show via other means? If you want to watch a preview for Sunday night’s new season 3 episode, you can do so just by visiting the link here.

Photo: HBO