The Question, Sunday 9/29/13: How Badly Will We Want to See Off Breaking Bad?

In protest of the broadcast networks' weak Sunday schedules, I'm spending b'cast's Premiere Sunday on cable with the series finale of Breaking Bad, a cultural mega-event that should crush all of the broadcast scripted options. This show's meteoric rise has been almost unprecedented. After four years toiling away at sub-1.0 ratings, it grew into the low 1's for the first half of the final season in 2012 and absolutely went through the roof for 2013's second half. Now there are more people watching AMC's week-long series marathon than may have seen some of those eps in first run! How badly will we want to see off Breaking Bad? That's The Question for Sunday, September 29, 2013.

Breaking Bad This Season

2.87 (premiere, 8/11/13, +89% y2y) 2.41 (8/18/13) 2.54 (8/25/13) 2.18 (Labor Day weekend, 9/1/13) 2.58 (9/8/13) 3.19 (9/15/13) 3.37 (9/22/13)

The crazy thing about trying to predict this show is that all this growth has come even though there's no huge reserve of old fans expected to come back for the end, as there certainly was in The Sopranos' spike from mid-3's all the way up to 5.4 in 2007. Usually that's what causes massive finale jumps. Here, all of the Nielsen momentum has come from the scores and scores of new fans. But there sure are a lot of 'em. My guess: a ton of Breaking Bad DVRers will be watching this finale within the Live+SD window, and all the new broadcast competition (plus Showtime's Homeland premiere) practically doesn't matter here.

Over/Under: 4.45.

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