Fear the Walking Dead season 3 posts lowest live ratings to date
Despite not airing against too much in the way of major competition (neither The Leftovers nor Twin Peaks are considered to be tremendous ratings hits), the two-part season premiere averaged just a 1.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic. This would be a solid rating were it not for the fact that the second season averaged around a 1.8 rating, so this is a drop of close to 40%.
In terms of the premiere numbers, the disparity is even larger. The first episode of season 2 posted a whopping 3.1 rating, so we’re talking losing almost two-thirds of your audience from the beginning of that season to the start of this one. That is enormous, and to think that season 2 drew on average 50% fewer viewers in the demo than season 1. This is a show that started with huge ratings and big aspirations, but to date it’s failed to live up to most of them.
When you think about everything from the show’s original platform to also the popularity of zombies in general, there is only one thing that you can attribute the drops to: Quality. While there are more and more viewers out there watching television live, the success of a show like This Is Us proves further that if you have a great product, viewers will seek it out and watch it live. If they have some sort of doubts, they’ll be less inclined to do so and will choose instead to just check it out via DVR or Netflix after the fact.
One other thing that may be hitting AMC hard especially (remember, ratings for The Walking Dead proper and Better Call Saul were also down double-digits in the demo versus prior seasons) is the practice of cord-cutting. With fewer people interested in paying for cable subscriptions, they are more liable to either watch a show after the fact or not at all.
The good news for Fear the Walking Dead is that they’ve vastly improved since the start of season 2 in terms of the quality of their episodes. The bad news is that they just killed off Travis in a pretty disappointing way. As explained in our review for the episode, doing so after the character just went through hell to survive felt like a miscalculation, and not enough has been done to mourn the character just yet. (Photo: AMC.)