‘The Walking Dead’ season 3 premiere shatters cable records
In case Dish Network was wondering, AMC just made a major case for itself as to why it is one of the leaders in providing original content on cable. After all, “The Walking Dead” just posted some premiere figures that are larger than pretty much any show on the past week, regardless of whether they aired on broadcast or cable.
Overall, the third-season premiere Sunday ended up drawing a massive 10.9 viewers, which makes this show the heftiest draw ever for an hour-long drama series in the history of basic cable. For further perspective, there are a number of drama broadcast series that do not even approach that number. As for something even more astounding, let’s turn at the moment to the fact that this show drew around a 5.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Not only is this a larger number than any series (broadcast or cable) in the past week, we can’t think of the last time a drama scored this high of a number in the past couple of years save for those that air right after the Super Bowl. This is a shocking, incredible number that even AMC must have never dreamed about.
In a statement, the network’s president Charlie Collier of course took advantage of the opportunity to tout the show’s massive success across just about every key measure known to man:
“Thank you to the fans for making ‘The Walking Dead’ such a tremendous success. We are honored and humbled that television’s largest adult audience resides on AMC. So many people on both sides of the camera worked tirelessly on this project, and I thank and congratulate each of them for their amazing contribution.”
After seeing these ratings, we have a feeling that CBS is probably getting ready to pitch a series about a zombie who works with a local police department to solve murders; meanwhile, MTV is already getting ready to lease out the “Jersey Shore” house again for a show featuring flesh-eating creatures who stumble around, groan, and vomit all over people. (Oh, wait…)
What do you think about these ratings?