Outlander season 4 ratings expectations: The early edition

We imagine that over the next nine or so months, we’ll touch base here and there with some Outlander season 4 ratings expectation pieces. We like to follow trends in TV, and we absolutely like to follow the potential performance of the Starz series long-term. It’s rather fun to watch a show become a phenomenon over time and it’s absolutely happened here. Just look at the growth from season 2 to season 3: The series went from averaging less than 1.1 million live+same-day viewers in season 2 to over 1.5 million viewers in season 3. There may have been some external factors in there such as the timeslot but, no matter how you slice it, season 3 was the best season of Outlander for Starz in the network’s history.

As for whether or not season 4 will continue that trend, signs definitely do point to yes for the time being.

Entering the fourth season airing next year, our expectation, easily, is for Outlander to stick around 1.5 million — we also expect it to rise above it. There’s a full year in between for viewers to discover the show! We feel like the live ratings would of course improve if Starz didn’t make their episodes available early on the app but there’s zero reason for them to change that. They care about subscribers more so than linear Nielsen ratings for their broadcasts. Season 3 averaged well over 5 million when you include everything from streams to repeat airings to DVR numbers. (DVR ratings are something we spoke about recently in another feature.

We figured that this article would be a chance to play around with an interesting ratings experiment: What happens if Outlander season 4 improves the same percent as Outlander season 3? Season 3 ratings improved by around 39% in total viewers from season 2– if season 4 was to do the same versus season 3, the show would average 2.1 million live viewers. There hasn’t been a single episode to date that has come anywhere close to that! “A. Malcolm” is the only one to generate more than 1.7 million viewers.

It is possible that Outlander could average more than 2 million viewers an episode, but it also feels overly ambitious — the change from Saturday to Sunday likely helped more to improve the show’s live viewership this time around, and with there being so many other ways to watch Outlander beyond 8:00 p.m. Eastern there’s little incentive for new viewers to all flock to watching the show live.

A more realistic expectation is this: Outlander season 4 averages around 1.7 million live viewers weekly, and then gets closer to 7 million who check out the show per episode across all of its different viewing platforms. That’s more indicative of the way in which viewers are watching TV and, at that point, it would probably generate all sorts of season 6 renewal discussions. (We’re assuming that by the time season 4 premieres a season 5 renewal will be well in the can.)

One thing we’ve noted

There seems to be some dissatisfaction among Outlander fans towards Starz right now over there not being a season 5 renewal yet. The only thing we have to say in response to this is simple: Give it time. Often there are legal discussions and other odds and ends to be worked out and that can take a while to work out. A deal will almost certainly be done in time for there to not be another extended Droughtlander like the one between season 2 and 3. Starz loves the show and they promote the heck out of it; there’s no cause for concern here.

If anything, this is far more commonplace than getting the early season 4 renewal we got last year. That was an aberration — a welcome one, but an aberration nonetheless.

For some more Outlander filming discussion…

Be sure to head over here to check out one of our other recent features on that subject! You can also like CarterMatt on Facebook for more news on all things Outlander. (Photo: Starz.)