‘Hell on Wheels’ season 4 ratings drop over Labor Day Weekend

Let’s go ahead and get the bad news over with when it comes to “Hell on Wheels” ratings, which were a little delayed in their release due to Labor Day Weekend: The show recorded its least-watched episode to date when it comes to total viewers.

A total of 1.78 million viewers, per TVbythenumbers, caught the episode airing on Saturday live, which is 50,000 less than the previous low set back during season 2. As for its 18-49 demo rating, the 0.3 was in the same range that we’ve seen all season long.

Obviously it stinks that the viewer count was lower than it has been, but there is no real reason to sound the alarm just yet. This is a difficult weekend to get viewers with so many people out, and while the show weathered the storm better last year, they may make some of this up when it comes to DVR viewing. We don’t know if we have also in these articles stated well enough how rough a year it has been for some cable networks in the ratings. USA numbers are down significantly this year versus 2013, and while AMC has held up reasonably well, their new series have struggled. This is probably one of the reasons why we’re still confident in the future of “Hell on Wheels” for at least another season, pending that there are no more drops.

Still, the one thing that we can recommend to you is to watch the show live, and if you cannot do that, at least check it out in enough time that you can make it into the live+3 data. More and more networks are looking more towards that in this DVR age for a measurement of how well their shows truly fare, and “Hell on Wheels” is consistently strong in this department.

If you missed it, click here to get some more reaction now to this past episode of the show, or head over here to sign up for more TV updates via our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: AMC