Dead show walking? OK, so that’s too melodramatic, but the Season 8 finale for AMC’s “The Walking Dead” just shed 30 percent of its overall Season 7 finale audience. And that’s not good.
Still, Sunday’s 7.9 million “live” viewers is still a big total — especially for cable — and it was 18 percent better than the prior week’s episode, according to Nielsen. Unfortunately, the year over year comparison looks bad, and there is no getting around that.
This was the least-watched “Walking Dead” season finale since the very first one.
At least the same night’s “Fear the Walking Dead” Season 4 premiere (4.1 million total viewers) was way up from its last episode. Of course, this one was boosted by virtue of having a sizable lead-in from the show it spun off of, which as we’ve said, still performs very well when including competitors’ shows in an analysis.
In the TV ratings from the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic, “The Walking Dead” Season 8 finale rose 21 percent week over week. Little brother “Fear” grew a gigantic 104 percent in the demo and 83 percent overall versus last year’s finale.
“Fear” was up about a million viewers from its Season 3 premiere.
AMC judges its series by their Live + 3 Day ratings, which include 72 hours of delayed viewing and will be available on Friday.
“Fear the Walking Dead” now airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.