'Game of Thrones' Finale Shatters Ratings Records
by EG
With this week's season finale episode, HBO's Game of Thrones crossed into entirely new territory. Its same-day ratings set a new record, and when time-shifted viewing is brought into the calculation, GoT draws bigger ratings than any other scripted show on television. That's bad news for the slumping The Walking Dead, which used to be the most-watched scripted show on cable; as TWD's ratings fell through its most recent season, it drew audiences that are significantly smaller than those for GoT's seventh season. The good news for TWD is that it might be a long time before GoT's eighth season hits the air.
Take a look at some of GoT's astonishing ratings numbers below, as compiled by The Hollywood Reporter.
Game of Thrones' seventh season solidified it as the biggest show on TV — and Sunday's finale further cemented that status.
The abbreviated penultimate run, just seven episodes, has been averaging an astonishing 31 million viewers per episode once live, time-shifted, on-demand and streaming plays are tallied. That's up 34 percent from the previous record-shattering season in 2016. As for Sunday's finale, the last episode that will air for potentially 16 months, HBO logged another all-time high 16.5 million viewers with live tune-in and night-of streams.
The final episode of the seventh season marked a 13 percent increase from the the previous mark set two weeks earlier (10.7 million viewers), and a 36 percent gain over last year’s finale (8.9 million viewers). It was also up 19 percent from this year’s debut, which clocked in at 10.1 million viewers.
Records came on an almost weekly basis this season. Starting with the July 16 return that brought in more than 16 million viewers across platforms on premiere night. The linear ratings alone have been unprecedented for the pay cable network. Two weeks before the finale, a record 10.7 million viewers tuned in live to watch Game of Thrones on the channel.
At this point, an estimated 90 percent of U.S. HBO subscribers watch Game of Thrones. And while the lack of any advertisers on the pay service takes Game of Thrones out of the traditional "demo" conversation, it is now unquestionably both higher-rated and a bigger audience draw than AMC's The Walking Dead.
Production on the fantasy drama's eighth season is slated to begin in October and run as late as August 2018, sources say. That could push the return of the abbreviated six-episode final run into 2019 with a more than 16-month gap between seasons. (HBO would neither confirm nor deny the rumors.)
"Our production people are trying to figure out a timeline for the shoot and how much time the special effects take," HBO programming president Casey Bloys tells The Hollywood Reporter. "The shooting is complicated enough — on different continents, with all the technical aspects — and the special effects are a whole other production period that we're trying to figure out. That is a big factor in all of this."
Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have all six episodes mapped out and are working in tandem with the production team to determine a schedule that makes sense for the sweeping fantasy drama and its sprawling cast. The longer wait for season eight comes after the premium cable network pushed back the start of season seven — from its typical spring debut to mid-July — as the production needed to shoot in a colder climate, including for scenes that take place beyond the wall.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
Have you already watched the season finale of GoT, or you one of that minority of TV viewers who just can't understand what the fuss is all about? Are you going to be going mad with anticipation for the upcoming final season, or could you use a break? Let us know all your GoT thoughts in the comments section below.