‘American Horror Story: Coven’ finale scares up big ratings for FX

While you may or may not have loved the final episode of “American Horror Story: Coven,” you can at least be assured that there was quite a hefty audience of people who tuned in to see what happened.

With a total audience of 4.24 million viewers and also a 2.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic, the show scared up its biggest finale numbers to date in the past three seasons. That is one of the many benefits of this anthology format that Ryan Murphy and company have created. Many of the devoted fans will continue to watch year after year, and they can pull in new viewers without them ever feeling like they have to binge-watch dozens of episodes in order to catch up. This is a very different sort of trajectory to Murphy’s other big show in “Glee,” which was already starting to shed viewers at around this time in its run.

When you factor in all measures of viewing, this season of “American Horror Story” has averaged over 7 million sets of eyeballs (an appropriate statement for this show) a week, which ranks it as the third-strongest show on cable, putting it even ahead of another network titan in “Sons of Anarchy.” The only two shows that it lags behind are “The Walking Dead” (ahead by a zombie mile), and also the final season of “Breaking Bad.” The show will be back with its fourth season this fall, which does not have much in the way of information about it out there yet. We imagine that much more will come later this spring, when the show makes a big splash at PaleyFest in Los Angeles.

Want to see our take on the finale, and also what we want to see on season 4? Then we suggest checking out our new episode of The CarterMatt Podcast from last night. Also, sign up here if you want to get updates on all things TV, sent straight to you via email.

Photo: Bravo