Cablemetrics: The Walking Dead, Archer, and a look at gender/age skews on cable

These numbers are current through Monday, April 4.

WHAT MATTERS:

• AMC bid farewell to The Walking Dead for another summer with a big spike to 6.92 for the finale. It was down 15% year-to-year, about in line with the -13% for the full spring season. More good news for AMC is that the zombies will keep coming next week with the return of Fear the Walking Dead, which was promoted pretty relentlessly throughout this TWD half-season.

• The biggest return of the week was FX's Archer, but its 0.54 rating was down 30% from last year's premiere. 

• Did some cable sub-demo data mining, and added the True Power Rankings "Skew" and "Male" color schemes to this table. As always, keep in mind you can sort these things by clicking on the categories!
• It becomes fairly clear that cable should have a different "heat map" than broadcast, but applying the broadcast heat map helps visualize some things. It's pretty obvious, for example, that almost all the top cable originals skew much more toward the 18-49 demo than the median broadcast series. Quite a few shows are on par with or even above the most demo-skewing broadcast series (Family Guy at 61%).

• And the top shows also largely skew male; not just more male than the 40%ish broadcast median, but actually more males than females. FX's Archer and AMC's Better Call Saul go even well beyond the 60% area, which is where the most male-skewing broadcast scripted series (Fox's animation and CW's superhero shows) tend to reside.

• The table is a bit biased due to what happens to be on the air right now. For example, cable certainly wouldn't be all green; TNT's Major Crimes (18%) and Rizzoli and Isles (20%) skew almost as out-of-demo as the oldest-skewing CBS series. And there would be more TGIT-esque female representation if other Freeform series like Pretty Little Liars (23% male) and The Fosters (25%) were still airing. This table will soon extend beyond just the last week again, so you'll be able to see more of those examples.

FULL TABLE:

Name	Net	Ep	A18-49	Last	Seas	Avg	y2y	Proj	ProjPlus	Skew	Male
The Walking Dead Spring	AMC	16	6.92	+19%	6	6.33	-13%	6.33	430	61%	53%
Talking Dead Spring	AMC	8	3.07	+31%	5	2.56	-7%	2.56	174	60%	51%
American Crime Story	FX	9	1.11	-7%	1	1.33		1.31	89	51%	50%
Better Call Saul	AMC	8	0.81	+4%	2	0.90	-45%	0.85	58	53%	67%
Vikings	HIST	7	0.69	+3%	4	0.67	-16%	0.68	46	39%	58%
Shameless	SHOW	12	0.66	+18%	5	0.64	-9%	0.64	43	52%	50%
Archer	FX	1	0.54		7	0.54	-30%	0.38	26	64%	67%
Shadowhunters	FREE	12	0.32	-3%	1	0.42		0.41	28	55%	30%
Broad City	COME	7	0.36	+6%	1	0.38		0.37	25	76%
Awkward Fall	MTV	15	0.25	-19%	3	0.36	-30%	0.36	24	66%	26%
Billions	SHOW	11	0.33	-3%	1	0.33		0.33	22	40%	60%
The Magicians	SYFY	12	0.28	0%	1	0.30		0.30	21	49%
Underground	WGNA	4	0.29	+21%	1	0.30		0.28	19	36%	41%
Outsiders	WGNA	10	0.27	+23%	1	0.28		0.28	19	45%	56%
The Americans	FX	3	0.24	-17%	4	0.27	-36%	0.20	14	36%	56%
Young and Hungry	FREE	9	0.23	+10%	2	0.26	-28%	0.25	17	61%
Girls	HBO	7	0.28	+8%	5	0.25	-14%	0.25	17	60%	45%
Baby Daddy	FREE	9	0.22	+5%	2	0.24	-38%	0.23	16	58%
Faking It	MTV	13	0.19	-10%	2	0.22	-40%	0.22	15	59%
Vinyl	HBO	8	0.20	-9%	1	0.22		0.22	15	45%	59%
Damien	A&E	5	0.12	-29%	1	0.20		0.16	11	48%	36%
Motive	USA	1	0.20		3	0.20		0.14	10	36%
Wynonna Earp	SYFY	1	0.20		1	0.20		0.14	10	32%
Stitchers	FREE	2	0.18	+6%	2	0.17	-61%	0.13	9	50%

The Cablemetrics table can be sorted by clicking any of the categories at the top (and a second click will sort in the other direction.) After having sorted by a category, you can hold SHIFT and click another category to sort by the second category within the first.