Cable ratings: No series high for ‘Homeland’ season 2; ‘The Walking Dead’ drops

As popular as “The Walking Dead” season 3 and “Homeland” season 2 are becoming at the moment, even they are still vulnerable to some bumps and the road from time to time … and this was proven in the latest ratings that were just released for Sunday night’s lineup.

Despite having an episode that (spoiler alert!) featured the shocking deaths of two characters in T-Dog and Lori, the AMC drama still scored a 4.9 rating and almost 10 million viewers for its new episode on Sunday. Sadly, the show is not going to be able to brag this time around about being the top-rated program on the past week; instead, this honor goes to “The Big Bang Theory” with a 5.2 on Thursday night. Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine that the network is altogether upset about a show outperforming almost everything on broadcast television.

As for “Homeland,” it failed to reach the two million mark this week after setting a series high in viewers with the first episode following Brody’s arrest for the CIA. This time, it drew 1.74 million along with a demo rating of a 0.8. These are still some fairly impressive numbers when you consider just how much this show is watched On Demand during the week, and that the subject matter is hardly as mainstream as “The Walking Dead.”

Elsewhere, we should give props to “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” as its season 5 premiere got off to a solid start courtesy of a 1.6 rating and over 3.2 million viewers. These are still not peak numbers for Bravo, but it is a solid performance given the competition that including “Walking Dead,” “Dexter,” “The Good Wife,” and “Revenge.” The latter show in particular was not even on the same night last year.