The War of 18-49, The Walking Dead

THE WALKING DEAD (AMC)

Scheduling history: The Walking Dead's short first season aired on Sundays at 10/9c. It was quickly evident this show was enough of a force that it should be leading into another primetime program, so it moved to 9/8c for season two and has been there ever since.

See (who saw) how it all began: It's easy to forget now that the series premiere ratings for The Walking Dead were themselves quite an amazing accomplishment, even at a fraction of what would be achieved in future seasons. It launched on Halloween in 2010 with 5.345 million viewers and a 2.7 demo rating, which already made it one of the very biggest series on cable. It dropped only a bit to a 2.5 rating in week two, stayed roughly steady for a couple weeks, then perked up to new highs (2.8 and 3.0) in each of season one's last two episodes.

The best of times: Had I written this post in season one, this space would keep getting rewritten with every new Walking Dead season. The ratings just keep going up, to the point that it now blows away all other entertainment series on broadcast or cable. The series high is an 8.7 demo, achieved for the season five fall premiere on 10/12/14. Broadcast TV produced its biggest new drama hit in at least a decade with Empire, and it still only barely averaged two thirds of what The Walking Dead did! But the show's fall 2016 return (8.35) was almost inarguably even more impressive; in historical-adjusted numbers, it topped even the Friends finale, which has been the standard bearer for these things.

The worst of times: The Walking Dead quickly left its early ratings in the dust; nothing in any subsequent season has even gotten down to the high point of season one or two. The series low is a 2.4 demo, set on 11/21/10, week four of the six-episode first season.

Then vs. now: If American Idol was the great TV ratings anomaly of the aughts, The Walking Dead should go down as the great TV ratings anomaly of this decade. It's had the same kind of seasonal uplifting of its network that Idol did; AMC almost always finishes in the top three basic cable networks in weeks when Dead is on, sometimes #1, and often drops into the 20's when it's off. Quantifying exactly how big an anomaly is tough. Its story is all the more impressive because it happened on basic cable, but looking at A18-49+ numbers may actually inflate it a bit at this point since its numbers (plus lead-out aftershow Talking Dead) don't get counted in the 'league average.' Even if we did that, though, it's still be the biggest entertainment series of the last decade-plus after  historical adjustments: even bigger than Idol in its prime!

On a yearly basis, The Walking Dead shattered some significant ceiling. In season one, it pulled ratings the broadcasters would be happy to have (which was relatively new for basic cable). In season two, it just about matched NCIS for top drama on all TV. Season three was the show's most impressive bump, surging from amazing cable story to amazing-for-anyone, and it only widened the gap vs. the entertainment field in season four.  There's really only one thing left for Dead to do, and that's regularly beat the top non-entertainment series (NBC's Sunday Night Football) on a same-day basis. The Walking Dead has beaten some of the weaker games head-to-head in the last few seasons. Though SNF still reigned with its 7.65 average in 2014-15, it was not by much. Does Dead have enough juice left to pull it off in the future? It looks like it may have missed the boat, as SNF has pulled further ahead in the last two years as Dead's declines have accelerated.

Adults 18-49 info by season:

Seas	Year	Slot	Avg	y2y	Lo	Hi	Results	Grade
1	Fall 2010	Sunday 10:00	2.65		2.4	3.0	detail
2	Fall 2011	Sunday 9:00	3.41	+29%	3.1	3.8	detail
	2		Winter 2012	Sunday 9:00	3.90				3.5	4.7	detail
3	Fall 2012		Sunday 9:00	5.32	+56%	4.9	5.8		detail
	3		Winter 2013	Sunday 9:00	5.78	+48%	5.4			6.4	detail
4	Fall 2013		Sunday 9:00	6.62	+24%	5.7	8.2	detail
	4		Winter 2014	Sunday 9:00	6.92	+20%	6.3			8.2	detail
5	Fall 2014		Sunday 9:00	7.46	+13%	7.0	8.7	detail	A
	5		Winter 2015	Sunday 9:00	7.31	+6%	6.2			8.2	detail	A
6	Fall 2015		Sunday 9:00	6.72	-10%	6.2	7.4	detail	A-
	6		Winter 2016	Sunday 9:00	6.33	-13%	5.8			6.9	detail	A-
7	Fall 2016		Sunday 9:00	5.62	-16%	4.9	8.4	detail	B+
	7		Winter 2017	Sunday 9:00	5.09	-20%	4.7			5.7	detail	B+
8	Fall 2017		Sunday 9:00	3.76	-33%	3.3	5.0	detail
	8		Winter 2018	Sunday 9:00	3.03	-40%	2.6			3.6	detail
9	Fall 2018		Sunday 9:00	2.05	-46%	1.8	2.5	detail
	9		Winter 2019	Sunday 9:00	1.72	-43%	1.5			2.0	detail

Historical-adjusted ratings by season:

Seas	Year	A18-49+	Label	Now19	y2y	Lo	Hi	Premiere	Finale
1	Fall 2010	104				94	118	106	118
2	Fall 2011	144				131	161	161	148
	2	Winter 2012	165				146	198	178	198
3	Fall 2012	253				233	274	274	258
	3	Winter 2013	274				257	304	290	304
4	Fall 2013	351				300	435	435	323
	4	Winter 2014	367				335	433	433	425
5	Fall 2014	443				413	514	514	451
	5	Winter 2015	435				370	485	475	485
6	Fall 2015	462				424	510	510	482
	6	Winter 2016	434				400	475	464	475
7	Fall 2016	459				400	682	682	416
	7	Winter 2017	416				385	467	467	442
8	Fall 2017	344				299	459	459	307
	8	Winter Spring 2018	277				240	332	332	311
9	Fall 2018	216				189	262	262	206
	9	Winter 2019	181				156	210	210	196
AVERAGE:		AVERAGE:	313

The War of 18-49 chronicles the ratings history of veteran primetime series. For more, see the Index.