‘Ink Master’ season 8 finale ratings: How did Ryan Ashley Malarkey’s win fare?

We don’t tend to track the ratings for “Ink Master” too much during the season, largely for the reason that its numbers don’t fluctuate too much, and the show’s frequently renewed for another season before the current one ends. For the most part, we consider writing about this show’s ratings to be fun more so than anything else, mostly to track how well this show is faring as an institution year to year.

Ryan Ashley Malarkey easily has become one of the most-publicized winners of the show ever thanks to her ability and her being the first female winner in eight seasons, but given the fact that the winner was not known before the finale, that didn’t have much of an impact on the numbers. Last night’s 90-minute episode (which strangely didn’t include much of a tease on next season) ended up drawing a 0.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic.

So in terms of how that stacks up to recent seasons, it’s wedged right in the middle. This finale is actually up from the 0.6 rating that last season’s finale (won by Anthony Michaels) received; meanwhile, the season before that ended with a 0.8 rating. Anywhere within this range is a number that Spike is obviously happy with. They generate a lot of revenue with both live airings and repeats, and this demo score isn’t really that much worse than many shows on broadcast TV.

So long as there continues to be a wide array of qualified tattoo artists out there to take part in the show, we don’t think there will be any problem with “Ink Master’s” longevity. The only real concern that we have at the moment is that tattooing is a market with a limited amount of talented people, and the pool is much smaller than a singing show, for example.

For some more news when it comes to “Ink Master,” be sure to head over to the link here! (Photo: Spike.)