SpotVault - Fear the Walking Dead (AMC) - Fall 2020 Ratings

Fear the Walking Dead

Sundays, 9/8c, AMC

SpotVault - Fear the Walking Dead (AMC) - Summer 2019 Ratings

Fear the Walking Dead

Sundays, 9/8c, AMC

SpotVault - Fear the Walking Dead (AMC) - Spring 2018 Ratings

Cablemetrics: American Horror Story, Fear the Walking Dead, Outlander, The Deuce

These numbers are current through Sunday, September 10.

WHAT MATTERS:

• FX's American Horror Story (2.02) returned to top the cable world on Tuesday, but the -27% was easily the show's steepest year-to-year decline for a premiere in series history. But it's a series that has been famous for its huge declines in the post-premiere weeks, so there is room to make up ground if it settles more smoothly this time.

Cablemetrics: Snowfall, Fear the Walking Dead, Will

These numbers are current through Monday, July 10.

WHAT MATTERS:

• FX's new drama Snowfall launched to a 0.58 demo on Wednesday, with a very young and male skew. Among the network's 2017 launches, that put it just a bit behind Legion (0.69) and Taboo (0.63) but a little ahead of Feud: Bette and Joan (0.52). Kinda crazy how close all those premieres were!

SpotVault - Fear the Walking Dead (AMC) - Summer 2017 Ratings

Cablemetrics: Fear the Walking Dead, Animal Kingdom, Twin Peaks, Stitchers

These numbers are current through Monday, June 5.

WHAT MATTERS:

• The Walking Dead's spin-off Fear the Walking Dead returned for what looks like another year of disappointment in the making, with a 1.18/1.04 for its two-hour season premiere. Both those hours were well less than half of the the first two hours of last season (3.08/2.53, which premiered in April 2016). And it was even a significant notch below the mid-1's it was usually getting when we last saw it in early fall 2016. Of course, it should be noted that it is still at over double the rating of everything else on this table...

Cablemetrics: Westworld, Shameless, Fear the Walking Dead, American Horror Story

These numbers are current through Monday, October 3.

WHAT MATTERS:

• HBO's much-hyped sci-fi drama Westworld opened to a 0.77 demo rating and just under 2 million total viewers on Sunday night. It didn't skew that young (with half its viewership falling in the 18-49 demo) but it was definitely super-male, with a 0.96 in males 18-49 vs. 0.58 in females 18-49. I've already seen a lot of comparisons to the modest beginnings of Game of Thrones' run back in spring 2011 (just 2.222 million viewers and a 0.9). Clearly, this is a much better start than that when looking at the 2016 environment, but it's also clear that very, very few shows take the kind of trajectory that Thrones has since then. With this start, it's not hard to envision Westworld as either an elite cable drama or a disappointment. (Or both?)

Cablemetrics: Atlanta, Queen Sugar, You're the Worst, Rizzoli & Isles

These numbers are current through Tuesday, September 6.

WHAT MATTERS:

• Broadcast TV seems to have left the early September premieres behind for the time being, but there are still some on cable. This week, FX gave its Tuesday 10/9c slot to Donald Glover's new comedy Atlanta, which started with a decent 0.53/0.48. It's a good bit behind the 0.83 where The Bastard Executioner started in this slot last fall, but Atlanta may be able to compare favorably going forward because Executioner had a rather epic post-premiere collapse, into 0.3 territory in the second half of the season.

Cablemetrics: The Night Of, The Strain, Fear the Walking Dead

These numbers are current through Monday, August 29.

WHAT MATTERS:

• HBO's miniseries The Night Of (0.86) was up another 25% on finale night, ending with its third consecutive new series high. It was an impressive finish, if not quite the 1.0 -> 1.6 explosion from True Detective's season one finale back in March 2014. I'd say it's enough that HBO will at least consider the possibility of bringing the brand name back for another run. 

Cablemetrics: Fear the Walking Dead, The Night Of, Power, Halt and Catch Fire

These numbers are current through Monday, August 22.

WHAT MATTERS:

• AMC's Fear the Walking Dead returned for the back half of season two with a 1.62 on Sunday. This was a double-digit step down from the show's previous series low (the 1.88 season 2A finale). It was barely half of the season two premiere (3.08) in April. And it was less than a third of the show's 4.93 series premiere, which was just one calendar year ago! But despite the increasingly negative trend, the show is still dominating the cable landscape rather easily. That's really just another testament to how incredibly far The Walking Dead mothership has separated from everything else in its space.

Cablemetrics: Preacher, Game of Thrones, Fear the Walking Dead, Royal Pains

These numbers are current through Monday, May 23.

WHAT MATTERS:

• On a busy final Sunday of the traditional regular season, AMC previewed its new drama Preacher (0.90) at 10/9c after the season finale of Fear the Walking Dead (1.88). Preacher can be a long-term AMC player if it holds anywhere close to that, of course, though it is worth noting that Into the Badlands had very similar retention of a much larger lead-in (3.15 out of 6.51) back in the fall. Preacher also has to wait two weeks for its next original episode, as it will sit out Memorial Day weekend next Sunday.

Cablemetrics: Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Fear the Walking Dead, Penny Dreadful

These numbers are current through Monday, May 2.

WHAT MATTERS:

• On HBO, Game of Thrones (3.67), Silicon Valley (0.92) and Veep (0.47) were all down in the vicinity of 10% from last week... but these were smaller drops than they took last year, so all three year-to-year trends improved. (Game actually bested the 3.57 for episode two of last season.)

Cablemetrics: Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Fear the Walking Dead, TURN

These numbers are current through Monday, April 25.

WHAT MATTERS:

• The return of Game of Thrones dominated Sunday night with a 3.98 A18-49 rating. It's the first ever down year-to-year Thrones premiere, but the decline was a very healthy 5% from last year's 4.19 opener. Leading out were returning comedies Silicon Valley (1.04, down 17% y2y) and Veep (0.52, down 5%).
• While Silicon does not fare well by any "retention" measure compared to Game of Thrones, it is interesting to note that its audience skewed a fair amount younger and more male than GoT. It seems that the most male-leaning scripted shows are actually young-skewing comedies like Silicon Valley, Archer and the Adult Swim fare, rather than the action shows.

• Competing with GoT head-to-head for the first time was AMC's Fear the Walking Dead (2.12), which took another double-digit hit.

Cablemetrics: Fear the Walking Dead, Orphan Black, 12 Monkeys, The Detour

These numbers are current through Monday, April 18.

WHAT MATTERS:

• AMC's Fear the Walking Dead (2.53) won another Sunday night, but it may be the last time it can say that for awhile. It was down 18% from last week's premiere, and once again was down by 38% from the corresponding season one episode. And that's before Game of Thrones even comes back as head-to-head competition. That looms next week.
• Continuing to track the Fear editions of Talking Dead... in week two, it dropped to 0.84, now retaining just 33% of the Fear demo. Remember from last week that the spring editions after the mothership never went worse than 37%.

Cablemetrics: Fear the Walking Dead, The Detour, Outlander, Dice

These numbers are current through Monday, April 11.

WHAT MATTERS:

• The Walking Dead universe showed at least a little mortality as Fear the Walking Dead opened season two with a 3.08 in the 9/8c hour. It's still a massive number (would qualify as a megahit by A18-49+ standards), but down 38% from its series premiere late last summer, and 0.23 points behind its previous series low.
• Another interesting note about FTWD is the fact that the Fear edition of after-show Talking Dead had relatively bad retention: its 1.05 rating was just 35% of the Fear rating. Compare this to the most recent spring episodes of the Walking Dead mothership: Talking Dead averaged 40% retention, did much better than that (46%/44%) for the premiere and finale respectively, and never did worse than 37%. I'm probably reading too much into this, but it seems like a potential red flag for the engagement level in the show. We'll see if it improves going forward.

SpotVault - Fear the Walking Dead (AMC) - 2015-16 Ratings

Cablemetrics: American Horror Story, Homeland, The Leftovers, The Affair

These numbers are current through Thursday, October 8.

WHAT MATTERS:

• American Horror Story opened the Hotel edition with a 2.99, ever so slightly below the last two season premieres (3.11 last year and 3.05 in 2013). In a cable world where the median decline is still somewhere in the -20s, that's great news.

Cablemetrics: Fear the Walking Dead, Doctor Who, The Bastard Executioner, Z Nation

These numbers are current through Thursday, October 1.

WHAT MATTERS:

• Episode five marked the first week-to-week growth for Fear the Walking Dead, bouncing back by a tenth to a 3.44 with last night's finale rating still to come.
  

Cablemetrics: Fear the Walking Dead, The Strain, Public Morals, Switched at Birth

These numbers are current through Thursday, August 27.

WHAT MATTERS:

• Plenty has already been said about the huge debut of Fear the Walking Dead (4.93), which enters this table at well over four times the next biggest show. There are definitely a lot of different ways of looking at this. If it were a The Walking Dead episode, it would be just the forty-seventh biggest episode of that series. But if it were a broadcast drama episode, it would be the ninth-biggest one of those in the last four-plus years! (Trailing only six Empires and two Super Bowl lead-outs.) The bottom line is that it's OK to be a tad underwhelmed by this 4.93 in the context of The Walking Dead's history, but TWD is such an incredible anomaly that it will still be unbelievably enormous in any other context.