‘American Horror Story: Roanoke’ ratings fall, but not at nightmare level yet

For one reason or another, we find ourselves especially interested in analyzing ratings for “American Horror Story,” even more so than any other show. Maybe a part of that stems from how the show follows a familiar-but-interesting trajectory year in and year out. The premiere tends to draw extremely good ratings, only to then start to decrease more and more as time goes on. The episodes before the finale tend to be a fraction of its former self, and yet everyone seems to come back for the premiere next season. We’re of course speaking here only of live+same day numbers; there are fluctuations that can come in other measures.

For the sixth season of this show subtitled “Roanoke” / “My Roanoke Nightmare,” we are certainly seeing this tradition hold once more. In the latest ratings for Wednesday night, the show drew a season-low 1.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic. This is a drop of around 15% from its most-recent figure, and it is also down versus the equivalent episode 4 rating for “American Horror Story: Hotel” last season.

The good news for “Roanoke” is that it does remain ahead of the average for “Hotel” by a good 20%, and it make be able to finish, even with declining ratings, ahead of it. One of the biggest things that the series has going for it in that department is that it has only ten episodes as opposed to twelve last season, and that means fewer episodes that will be in the ratings doldrums.

If we are to draw a parallel between ratings and quality, we do think that episode 3 was a tad too weird for its own good, and as a result of that the numbers suffered. With episode 4 charting better, hopefully things will stay consistent.

Want to look ahead towards episode 5? Rest assured, we’ve got a preview for you here. (Photo: FX.)