(AMC)
Fans don’t have to worry about The Walking Dead TV show being cancelled by AMC too soon, because it’s already renewed for an eighth season. That said, its seventh season, which concluded last month, dropped significantly in the ratings.
The Walking Dead follows a group of humans struggling to survive and adapt to a world that’s filled with zombies. The AMC cast includes: Andrew Lincoln, Norman Reedus, Lauren Cohan, Chandler Riggs, Danai Gurira, Melissa McBride, Lennie James, Alanna Masterson, Josh McDermitt, Christian Serratos, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand, Austin Amelio, Tom Payne, Xander Berkeley, Khary Payton, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Variety reports AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan addressed the declining ratings, this week:
AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan on Thursday sought to ease concerns among Wall Street analysts about ratings erosion for The Walking Dead after the No. 1 show on TV ended its seventh season.
“It’s pretty alive and vital and there’s a long time that we’re going to be playing with The Walking Dead,” Sapan told the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit in New York City during a session that was webcast. He conceded the seventh season ended with “some minor erosion” in overall audience ratings, but the zombie drama remains strong creatively.
After a seventh season that parted ways with four series regulars — Steven Yeun’s Glenn, Michael Cudlitz’s Abraham, Austin Nichols’ Spencer and Sonequa Martin-Green’s Sasha — the AMC series recently promoted Steven Ogg (Simon), Katelyn Nacon (Enid) and Pollyanna McIntosh (Jadis) to full-time roles for the upcoming eighth season.
And Sapan insisted the audience for Walking Dead far outranks viewership for the next most popular TV series like Empire and The Big Bang Theory. The show returns in October.
The Walking Dead: A Look at the Ratings
The seventh season of The Walking Dead averaged a 5.39 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 11.35 million viewers. Compared to season six, that’s down by nearly 17% in the demo and almost 14% in terms of total audience size.
Still, those ratings dwarf those of the other AMC TV shows we’re tracking. The cable network’s second best performer is Fear the Walking Dead. And yet, it its second season, the spin-off averaged a 1.83 in the demo and drew an average of 4.19 million viewers. Fear the Walking Dead, season three, premieres on Sunday, June 4, 2017 at 9:00pm ET/PT, with back-to-back new episodes.
What do you think? Are you still watch The Walking Dead TV series? How many seasons do you expect it to last?
I defended this show for so long against all its detractors, but I just can’t any more. Season 7 was terrible. Yes, killing a longtime favorite like Glenn so brutally was bad, but it could have recovered from that. It was the boring, slow, repetitive episodes in which NOTHING happened to advance the plot, week after week, that ruined the show. The producers keep insisting “We NEED to go this slow for character development” – BULL! Plenty of other shows advance their plots every single week and have greater character development than TWD – Game of Thrones, for example. TWD… Read more »
The brutality is what made it great
Was a huge fan thru season 5, had to force myself to watch season 6 and 7. Will not be watching season 8. The writing is boring and stale. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The drama in. Season 7 1st episode was great and look this is a series it’s going have ups and downs.but it’s ok u can allways jump back on.
Negan is a very boring story!!!! It started alright but became the same thing over and over…episode after episode ….they should have killed off his character at the end of season 7 and let Sasha live…
Watched from the begning and this was by far the worst season… don’t know if I will watch again….
BORING!!!!
Stale repetitive storylines–seriously, Daryl captured again? Terrible Negan mugging by JDM, whom I usually like. Dumpster fakeout. Gimple has utter disrespect for his viewers. Some showrunners you implicitly trust: Gilligan, Hawley, Fields & Weisberg, Benioff & Weiss. Gimple isn’t one of them.
I just could not watch after the brutality of the season premiere. I have not watched it since. I think they lost a lot of viewers at precisely that moment.
I told my husband I was done after the season premiere. It was EXTREMELY hard to watch. But I watched the After Show, and one of the writers said the whole season wouldn’t be as brutal. So I watched the second episode, and it was definitely more light – just what was needed for me to continue to watch.
I get what the other said minus the name calling. People have been killed before. What about Maggie’s father? Wasn’t his head cut off right in front of everyone and other stuff I can’t remember. You’re right..it’s your choice though…just like I choose not to watch all these shows with “typical” female leads.
I kept watching but I do have a few friends who stopped watching after that episode. I do think they lost a lot of viewers because of that. Kind of odd since it’s a show about the zombie apocalypse so it’s going to have brutality but I guess it was the emotional toll it took on people. Had Negan chopped off Carl’s arm, I would have stopped watching (and I dislike Carl).