'Walking Dead' Ratings Hold Steady After Rick's Departure
by EG
Remaining fans of The Walking Dead don't seem to be fleeing after the departure of the series' central character, at least not after just one episode after the last one featuring Rick Grimes. But the series also isn't gaining back any of the majority of viewers have given up on it over the past two seasons. Read on for details.
The helicopter that carried Rick Grimes off The Walking Dead did not take the show's audience with it.
Ratings for the AMC series held up just fine in the first episode without former lead Andrew Lincoln, whose last appearance on the flagship series was Nov. 4. (He'll continue as the character in a set of feature-length Walking Dead movies.) That episode improved on the previous week's numbers, and while the first post-Lincoln episode, "Who Are You Now," did indeed decline slightly, the losses were negligible.
Sunday's episode drew a shade under 5.4 million viewers, off a scant 1 percent from the prior week. About 2.6 million of those people fell in the key ad-sales demographic of adults 18-49, down 3 percent versus Lincoln's farewell. (Sunday's show had a 2.0 rating in the demo vs. 2.1 a week earlier.)
The episode's 25-54 audience of 3.1 million was even with the prior week.
It should be said that The Walking Dead's ratings are at a historically low ebb: Season nine is currently the show's weakest in the 18-49 demo and just barely ahead of season one in same-day viewership. Its numbers have fallen hard and fast in the past two seasons, but the audience that remains — and which still outdraws any other cable series — didn't erode any more in the immediate wake of Lincoln's departure.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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