The eighth season finale of “The Walking Dead” enjoyed substantial week-over-week gains in adults 18-49 and overall viewership.<\/p>\n
According to live+same-day data posted by Showbuzz, Sunday’s season finale drew a 3.41 adults 18-49 rating and averaged 7.92 million overall viewers.<\/p>\n
The numbers, which are the show’s best since the midseason premiere (and were the best posted by a cable show Sunday), top the 2.81 rating and 6.67 million viewer mark drawn by the season’s penultimate episode.<\/p>\n
In addition to ranking as cable’s top-rated and most-watched show, “The Walking Dead” led all Sunday TV programs in adults 18-49. If “Roseanne” endures even a slight drop this week, “The Walking Dead” will rank as the week’s top scripted program in the demo.<\/p>\n
AMC followed the season finale of “The Walking Dead” with the fourth season premiere of spin-off “Fear The Walking Dead.”<\/p>\n
“Fear” naturally benefited from the placement. It drew a 1.63 rating and 4.09 million viewer marks, numbers which rank as the show’s best since the seventh episode of season two (May 22, 2016).<\/p>\n
Granted, one can make the case that the retention is underwhelming in context. Featuring a rebooted narrative and the debut of Morgan from “The Walking Dead” (Lennie James), Sunday’s premiere was clearly designed to attract “TWD” fans who were not regularly watching “Fear.”<\/p>\n
That it retained about the same percentage of “TWD” viewers as the premiere of unrelated series “The Terror” is certainly surprising, if not disappointing.<\/p>\n
Still, “Fear” fared quite well by typical TV standards: it was Sunday’s #4 cable original (below “The Walking Dead” and two NBA Playoff games).<\/p>\n
And if live+same-day ratings for “Fear” can remain in this general ballpark (especially since the show also receives lifts from DVR and multi-platform viewing), it is hard to imagine AMC being anything but happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AMC had a big Sunday night, as “The Walking Dead” jumped — and then boosted “Fear The Walking Dead.”","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1048],"tags":[671,4865,969],"adace-sponsor":[],"yoast_head":"\n