‘The Walking Dead’ season 3: Hurricane Sandy has no impact on ratings

While it is going to be a little while before we know some of the network ratings from Monday night thanks in part to Hurricane Sandy slowing down reporting, we do have some good news for fans of “The Walking Dead”: despite all of the preparations for the storm hitting on Sunday, the show actually managed to increase its audience from the week before.

When the show aired last week (when it drew an impressive 5.1 rating in the 18-49 demographic), it may have been doing so before many people were aware that Dish Network and AMC had reached an agreement on carriage after several months of fighting. This time around, the show rose up to a 5.4 for a much-anticipated episode all about the arrival of The Governor and Woodbury. This was the second-strongest episode to date for the show behind only its season 3 premiere, and the demo rating makes it yet again the strongest program on all television (including network shows) with the demographic the advertisers care about the most. In viewers, the show was up around a full million to 10.5.

As for whether or not storms tend to help ratings, it’s hard to full measure it. Some folks may have been too busy evacuated or readying themselves for the disaster coming to worry about watching a television show, whereas it’s also possible that many viewers were already prepared, and during times like this there’s not much else to do outside of sit inside, watch TV, and hope that the power doesn’t go out. The outages started on Sunday, after the show ultimately aired.