Cable ratings: Power season 4, Fear the Walking Dead, and Preacher season 2
Going into the weekend, the assumption was that all of these shows would lose a little live viewership. With July 4 falling on a Tuesday, the general consensus for many people was to treat Monday as a holiday and turn this into a four-day weekend. That proved pretty true in some of the ratings trends.
Power – This episode generated on Sunday a 0.6 rating, which is the lowest live rating for the show in the 18-49 demographic since season 2. It also generated 1.44 million viewers, also the lowest total since 2015. Remember for a moment, though, that only a small percentage of the show’s viewership, even on Sundays, comes via live+same-day. Last week, the ratings basically doubled in total viewers when you factored in multiplatform viewing, so it’ll be interesting to see if that remains consistent.
Fear the Walking Dead – Despite being a fairly good episode, this past episode drew a series-low 0.8 rating in the demo — further evidence that this show just can’t stop the bleeding no matter how hard they try. This is the best season of Fear the Walking Dead to date, but when you look at the numbers, it almost feels like it doesn’t even matter. The show has been renewed for a fourth season already, so at the very least it doesn’t have to worry so much about that.
Here is a little bit of good news: The show is ending before Game of Thrones comes on the air. With that, it doesn’t have to worry about facing off with that sort of crazy competition … thankfully.
Preacher – Finally, we turn to season 2 and its second episode to air on Monday (third overall). We predicted that the show airing before the Fourth would lead to some ratings lows, and it did. It tied the 0.4 rating in the demo from last week, but fell to just over 1.11 million viewers. We don’t think that the lower ratings are indicative of any sort of long-term future for the show, though; remember, there are going to be opportunities for it to improve ever so slightly in the weeks to come without all of the holiday competition. Virtually, from now until Labor Day it should be smooth sailing without all that much competition.
Of these three shows, Preacher is the only one with an ambiguous future. We know that AMC loves the show and loves having Seth Rogen around as an executive producer on it. The odds are good that it’ll come back, but if the ratings fall any further, there could be trouble.
As always, we welcome some of your thoughts on this latest batch of cable ratings now in the comments!
Meanwhile, be sure to head over here to get some further news when it comes to Power, including a little more in the way reviews, previews, and deeper analysis. (Photo: Starz.)