Ratings: ‘Game of Thrones’ hits new series high; ‘Vikings’ finale strong for History
Just like Danaerys Targeryan, “Game of Thrones” is starting to slowly and surely build an impressive army. After some TV critics out there chose to poo-poo the show’s season 3 premiere ratings (despite them being the strongest yet), everyone seemed to forget one thing: The show was up against “The Walking Dead” finale! The two shows share a pretty big audience, and we’re starting to see now what the true potential of the HBO fantasy is.
Sunday night’s excellent episode set yet another series high, as close to 4.9 million people ended up tuning in. While we don’t know necessarily how important the 18-49 demographic is for a network without advertisers, it still must feel good that this 2.6 was better than anything on broadcast TV Sunday night (and for a pay-cable channel, that is even more impressive).
As of right now, it’s pretty easy to feel confident that “Game of Thrones” will hit 5 million viewers by the finale, and it’s starting to inch near the numbers that “True Blood” was at during its peak. (We expect the vampire series to lose a little bit of steam this summer, as interest seems somewhat down.)
In other ratings news, fans of History’s “Vikings” should feel rather pleased that the show drew a 1.2 rating for its season 1 finale, which is impressive given that it no longer has “The Bible” as a lead-in. The network is proving that original programming is certainly viable for them, and we’d love to see a time-slot companion series for the show next year that could continually bring in viewers to their Sunday lineup.
What is your reaction to some of these knockout ratings? If you want to also check out some reflection on this past “Game of Thrones” via the show creators, you can do so over at the link here.
Photo: HBO