The Walking Dead live ratings drop but extended views hold steady
By Sonya Iryna
Live views of The Walking Dead episode 805 “Big Scary U” dropped but extended views for “Some Guy” were consistent with extended views for past episodes.
Live ratings took a hit for the fifth episode from season 8 of the The Walking Dead titled “Big Scary U”. Sunday’s ratings were the lowest live views for the show since season 2. But having one-off night, especially the Sunday before a holiday, doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Looking at the big picture it’s clear that the show’s ratings, while lower than they used to be, are consistent with a drop in cable live views across the board. Where The Walking Dead differs from other cable shows is in the huge pickup of views it gets in extended views.
The Live+3 extended views for episode 804 “Some Guy” were almost exactly the same as the extended views for episode 803 “Monsters”. The fact that extended views are getting almost the same amount of increase each week proves that fans are still watching the show. They’re just not watching it on Sunday nights.
The live views for episode 805 “Big Scary U” were 7.8 million. While those numbers were low for a ratings powerhouse like The Walking Dead the show still led the Sunday night ratings. The Live+3 extended views for “Some Guy” were 12.3 million which showed an increase of 3.6 million from the Sunday night broadcast.
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Fans Are Still Watching
One of the problems in gauging The Walking Dead’s ratings is that the cable industry has changed and using live views and extended views to track ratings is quickly becoming an unreliable way to track ratings.
As millions of people drop their cable subscriptions and millions more people use DVRs to record shows like The Walking Dead and watch them at more convenient times during the week live views are just not an accurate measure of a show’s fandom anymore.
So until a better model for tracking views is developed there will still be headlines each week proclaiming that The Walking Dead’s ratings drop means that fewer fans are watching. But that’s not accurate. Fans are still watching, they’re just watching at different times.
But don’t worry fandom – The Walking Dead isn’t going anywhere. It’s still the most popular show on cable TV and that doesn’t show any signs of changing no matter what some click bait headlines say.