‘The Walking Dead’ season 5, episode 10 suffers ratings fall against ‘Saturday Night Live’ special

Is the zombie horde of fans flocking to “The Walking Dead” starting to finally cease? While it may be too early to say that, the AMC drama may have finally hit its peak.

For its latest episode on Sunday night entitled “Them,” the show drew over 12 million viewers and a 6.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Given the midseason premiere a week earlier drew an 8.0, that is a pretty hefty drop. While there tends to be a decline for the second episode following a premiere, this is the lowest-rated episode of the show in season 5. Is there a reason for it? Sure, given that the “Saturday Night Live” 40th anniversary special almost drew an 8.0 rating of its own, and these two shows may share a little bit of an audience. However, you can argue that the Grammys aired last week against the premiere, and they had an even better overall rating than “SNL.” During the fall “Sunday Night Football” also had big ratings. Maybe there is not the same crossover of fans there.

We don’t want to sound particularly negative on “The Walking Dead” here for one simple reason: These are still phenomenal numbers, and enough to make the show the #1 scripted program by a pretty hefty margin. At the moment, “Empire” is the biggest competition to seize the title, and while it has performed wonderfully for Fox, it has yet to hit a 5.0 rating. This is probably not a series that will be going anywhere in the future, and typically around the third or fourth season, cable shows tend to peak. For “The Walking Dead” to rise for this long is remarkable.

We’re not quire sure that we expect a turnaround in the numbers this coming weekend due to the Oscars, but the week after, expect to see the show get a little closer to a 7.0 again in the demo.

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