This Columbus Day weekend was a little more intense than usual. AMC’s The Walking Dead, also known as the most watched cable show in history, premiered its sixth season on Sunday night, to the anticipation and suspense of 14.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and upstaging the Giants v. 49ers game, as some early reports indicate. Fans tuned in and made room in their schedules for the zombie apocalypse, hoping to catch the show live at a gathering with friends or at least soon after its release. Nielsen’s Twitter TV ratings also say a lot about live TV viewership in this day and age. With 611,000 tweets related to The Walking Dead generated on Sunday night reaching over five million unique Twitter users, cable TV is alive and well, unlike many of the characters on the show.
It’s important to note that the sense of unity that The Walking Dead has created among viewers and the large viewership it’s attracted has taken place despite the show’s dark scenes—many of which would have never made it to the screen in the old days of fewer channels, when content was purposely molded to appeal to viewers of all ages and tastes. In this post-DVD era, when audiences prefer to watch their favorite shows on the go or after the fact on their iPads, iPhones or even YouTube, and to find entertainment that caters specifically to their niche interests, The Walking Dead has brought in record breaking live viewership numbers since its zombies made their debuts in 2010.
Last season’s finale brought in 15.8 million viewers, with all 16 episodes of the season ranking in the top 50 telecasts across all of television in a beloved and hard-to-attract demographic, adults in the 18-49 age range. TV by the Numbers cites this achievement as a first in all of cable history.
Prior to this season, the only show that came close to topping a season premiere of The Walking Dead was its companion series and prequel, Fear the Walking Dead, which debuted in August with 10.1 million live viewers, according to Nielsen. The Talking Dead, a talk show host series which recaps, analyzes each episode and features cast members after the release of each episode, also ranked in the top three television telecasts in all of cable in the 18-49 age demographic for the majority of last season.
On top of its spinoffs, The Walking Dead garners a lot of online engagement among its fans. The season 5 finale ranked as the most engaging series of the day on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr, according to TV by the numbers, which, if Sunday night’s social media activities during the premiere were any indication, is sure to continue this Fall. And new this season, AMC and Next games recently released The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land, the official mobile game based on the show, another opportunity for fans to interact and directly engage with the show.
Viewers are confronted with numerous entertainment choices today, making audience fragmentation prevalent and show exploration all the more possible and exciting. But when a show like The Walking Dead comes out of nowhere and shatters viewership records of this kind of magnitude, it’s a reminder that the golden age of television still lives, and that every once in a while, a show comes around that gathers people together for premiere parties, becomes the topic of a lunch conversation the next day at work, and gives us the entertainment and escape we all crave.