Outlander season 4 episode 2 live ratings slide further: What it means
Related Outlander video – Check out our full review for this past episode at the bottom of this article, and remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for more! You can also check out our full show playlist for further insight.
Overall, Sunday night’s new episode “Do No Harm” ended up posting 870,000 total viewers, which is down more than 200,000 viewers from the premiere. (Here we were, thinking that the ratings for episode 2 would improve…) This marks the lowest live viewership for the show since season 2, which is back when Outlander aired on Saturday nights.
We know that the immediate reaction to these ratings is to get relatively bummed-out, thinking that this series is, for one reason or another, not the ratings warrior that it once was. Yet, there are a lot of different variables to consider here — including that live viewership is down dramatically across a number of premium cable shows. Outlander season 4 is down more than 35% in live total viewers from season 3; earlier this summer, Power was down more than 20% in the same measurement on Starz versus its prior season. Meanwhile, over on Showtime this fall Ray Donovan has lost season-to-season about 29% of its live viewership. While the Outlander decline is a little steeper than some of these shows right now, this does signify a further trend where there are less and less people watching television live.
Do we think that every person who was watching Outlander live is now checking it out early via the app or On-Demand, or on DVR after the fact? That’s where things get a little more complicated. Some of them likely are, but we do have to recognize the possibility that the series may be shedding some consolidated viewers versus season 3. We’re just not going to know the full answer on that for a while given that Starz does not release all of their app / On-Demand views. There’s no mechanism in which they have to; it’s more at their own discretion. (One other thing to note is that live ratings are just for US airings, and just for people who either watch the show when it’s on via the linear channel or on DVR that same day.)
Is there any cause for concern?
In a word, no. We always wish that live ratings are stronger because we, as a generational / cultural thing, love the tradition of sitting down and watching a TV show at the time that it’s on. Yet, many others don’t feel the same. There are a lot of people out there who watch at midnight the moment the episodes are available, and given that Outlander has already been renewed through season 6, there is nothing to be worried about. It’s really too early to determine whether or not the series lasts beyond that point just because there are a lot of factors at play. Performance may be one of them, but it’s far from the only one.
Related News – Be sure to preview more of what’s coming on Outlander season 4 episode 3 next week!
What do you think about the latest Outlander season 4 episode 2 ratings? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments! (Photo: Starz.)