‘The Walking Dead’ season 7: The bigger picture of the midseason finale’s ratings drop

We talked a little bit earlier in the week about the drop of live viewers for “The Walking Dead” both in terms of the recent midseason finale, and largely the show as a whole ever since the season 7 premiere answered some of the questions many fans had regarding Negan.

Through much of that, some of what we’ve said is that it is always possible that there are many people out there still watching, but many may be choosing to do so after the fact for whatever reason that they choose. Now, we’re getting a little bit of a clearer picture as to where everything stands courtesy of the live+3 data, which includes three days’ worth of viewing via DVR and other measures.

Overall, the midseason finale within this measure brought in a total of around 15.2 million viewers, which is certainly a really respectable figure and one of the best on all of TV. However, it is still about three million fewer viewers than the total who watched the midseason finale of season 6 in the live+3 format. This means that for the most part, there are fewer people watching the show — maybe some have given up, or some others have drifted off to Netflix or somewhere else where they can binge the show later. (We don’t blame them for that, given that this show does have that sort of appeal.)

The biggest complaint that we’ve heard with multiple people on the new season is simply that the story is paced far too slowly for its own good, and that people want to see more of the characters they like and a story that is moving more in a forward direction. So far this year, we’ve had lengthy stories that took place at the Hilltop Colony, and then also one that introduced Oceanside, where Tara spent some time. Neither one of these necessarily packed in the viewer or the critical acclaim.

For some other news when it comes to “The Walking Dead” right now, be sure to head over to this link! (Photo: AMC.)