Ratings data for the ninth “The Walking Dead” season finale offers a textbook glass half-full, glass half-empty scenario.<\/p>\n
The glass half-full part concerns the fact that the episode delivered the show’s best numbers in over a month. The glass half-empty part concerns the fact that the episode was the show’s lowest-watched finale on record.<\/p>\n
According to live+same-day data posted by Showbuzz, Sunday’s finale drew a 1.86 adults 18-49 rating and averaged 5.02 million overall viewers. The numbers markedly top the 1.48 rating and 4.15 million viewer mark posted by the previous episode.<\/p>\n
They, moreover, are the best for the show since the 2.0 rating and 5.16 million viewer mark drawn by the midseason premiere. They nonetheless represent the show’s weakest live+same-day finale performance to date. The previous low was held by the first season finale, which drew a 3.0 rating and 5.97 million viewers.<\/p>\n
The reality is that neither aspect of the performance is surprising.<\/p>\n
Season finales of “The Walking Dead” typically post substantial gains from their preceding few episodes, so this Sunday’s increase is not necessarily worthy of celebration. It does not necessarily confirm a powerful response to the bloodbath of last week’s episode.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, it is important to note that “The Walking Dead” spent the bulk of its season at series low levels. As a result, it was essentially a foregone conclusion that the season finale would be the least-watched on record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was the most-watched episode since the midseason finale.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":126478,"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":[671,969],"adace-sponsor":[],"yoast_head":"\n