‘Outlander’ episode 9 ratings: Did Starz see ratings boost after hiatus?

Throughout the past few months, fans of “Outlander” have eagerly awaited to see what would be taking place next on Starz when the series returned with the final eight episodes of the first season. Were they able to bring in some more viewers to go along with them?

Overall, the show’s ninth episode on Saturday drew 1.22 million live viewers, which is a massive increase from the series premiere last summer. However, it is down from the record 1.42 million who watched the finale. While these are very good numbers for a premium cable network without many mainstream hits, we are still admittedly surprised that there wasn’t an increase given much of the hype and all of the big-ticket interviews and gigs that the cast and crew have had in the past six months.

One of the things that you have to remember here is perspective, mostly in that viewers have to specifically subscribe to Starz in order to watch, and some out there may be deciding that they would rather wait for a DVD or some other means to watch the show. Also, we have not seen all of the DVD playback just yet; given that this episode aired the weekend of Easter, the live audience may have been crippled somewhat.

“Outlander” has been renewed already for a second season, and so long as it continues to draw these sort of ratings, there is zero reason to think that it will be going anywhere in the near future. We’ll continue to watch the ratings situation most of the spring; we do not anticipate any huge rises for the next month or so, but there could be some records broken for the finale.