Finale ratings: ‘The Walking Dead’ season 3 up; ‘Boardwalk Empire’ down

While the ratings are not in just yet for every cable show Sunday night across the board, we do have some numbers to share now when it comes to a pair of prominent series that chose to order their ratings a little bit early: the midseason finale for “The Walking Dead,” and the season 3 finale for “Boardwalk Empire.”

Let us start with the former, mostly because we figure there are a good many people out there chomping at the bit to see how AMC’s zombie drama fared this week. It’s pretty impossible at this point to be disappointed by any performance that this show has, even though we know there were some people out there shockingly who expected even more out of the show other than a 5.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic along with 10.5 million viewers. These numbers really only trail the premiere as the most-watched episode in the history of the show, and were it not for a football game involving the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles (where are ratings monsters year after year), it may have actually broken the record.

Meanwhile, the “Boardwalk Empire” finale this year brought in 2.7 million viewers, and no 18-49 figures were available as of this writing. (Then again, this is less important for HBO given that they do not have ads that need to be supported by specific age groups.) This number is down a tick from last year’s 3 million viewers, and you could actually blame both the football game and “The Walking Dead” for this. We said it earlier, but HBO does need to seriously consider moving this show so that it brings in more attention.

Did you catch either one of these shows Sunday? Be sure to share your thoughts below, and you can check out some scoop on what lies ahead on “The Walking Dead” over here.

Photo: AMC