Articles

June 10, 2013
 

THE SKED: Preliminary Cable Ratings for “Game Of Thrones” and “Falling Skies”

 

Remember all those people who said they’d never watch GAME OF THRONES or for that matter HBO again after the Red Wedding?  Well, they didn’t go anywhere.  Last night’s Season 3 finale had a viewership of 5.4M people, even higher than the 5.2M who tuned in for the Stark/Frey nuptials.  It was also a whopping 1.2M more than Season 2’s finale drew, although it wasn’t quite a Thrones record, that being the 5.5M who watched the May 5 episode.  (Demo details will be available tomorrow.)  HBO would also like it to be known that when all viewers on all platforms at all times are counted, an average Thrones episode this season was watched by 13.6M people, up 2M from last year’s equivalent measure.  The only more-watched HBO show is The Sopranos, but that series existed before there were so many technological opportunities for delayed viewing, making its 14.4M average still far more impressive.

Meanwhile, despite the competition from Thrones and the NBA Finals, the 2-hour Season 3 premiere of FALLING SKIES did quite well for TNT, holding even with a 1.5 rating in the 18-49 demo and down just 300,000 total viewers from last season’s premiere to 4.2M.  It was even up in 18-34 year olds from last year, with about 150K extra viewers in that demo.

 



About the Author

Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."