'The Walking Dead' Sets Another Ratings Low Mark
by EG
The Walking Dead continues to explore new ground in terms of ratings, as this week's episode had an even smaller audience than last week's, setting a new series-low mark. And yet, AMC continues with its plan to pour a huge amount of money into the franchise, producing spinoffs, feature films, and other stuff. Is it a good idea? One writer thinks not.
Via Forbes.
The Walking Dead set a record this past weekend, a bad one. Despite a pretty solid season 9 so far where the show is the best it’s been in years, The Walking Dead finally did it, it hit an all-time ratings low with that episode bringing in less viewers than any episode ever, even when it was just getting started in season 1.
The reasons for this are…fairly obvious
The show has spent a solid 2-3 years being pretty bad before this.
During those 2-3 years, the show has lost almost all of its major characters. Glenn, Abraham, Sasha, Maggie and even the two leads, Rick and Carl Grimes. Now Michonne is on the way out. Carol and Daryl are the only “OGs” that remain.
I mean, it’s season 9. This is a nine year old show. Ratings are going to go down.
The obvious conclusion to draw here is that maybe after a full decade, the era of The Walking Dead is drawing to a close. And yet weirdly, AMC seems more determined than ever to triple down on the series in ways I don’t fully understand, and do not seem to jibe with the current situation.
AMC is renewing The Walking Dead indefinitely. Despite crashing ratings, the show is coming back for season 10, and AMC has routinely talked about the showing lasting effectively forever with a rotating cast, even if ratings are now 25% of what they were at its megahit peak years ago.
AMC is keeping Fear the Walking Dead alive despite that show also killing off almost its entire main cast, a creatively questionable new direction in the past season and also falling ratings, though now they’re about half of what The Walking Dead’s are which is…unsettling. Fear is also continuing to siphon off characters from the core show, first Morgan, in an effort that I would argue did not benefit either show, and now Dwight this coming season which I mean, why.
Past this, there are roughly a zillion confirmed and rumored other Walking Dead projects in the works. The one that is definitely happening is this Rick Grimes movie trilogy which was his compromise in leaving the show, supposedly some sort of big budget feature that is going to be…shown on AMC, so really it will just be like a supersized episode or two of TWD without the rest of the cast. Though now Michonne may join if she leaves the main show. Other rumors include spin-off movies surrounding The Governor, Negan, Daniel and Abraham in another Fear/TWD crossover. There are rumors of new spin-offs including possibly giving Maggie her own if her new ABC show doesn’t work out.
Get the rest of the story at Forbes.
Do you think AMC should be pouring its resources into TWD? Let us know in the comments below.