Is AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ the Most Popular Show on TV?

With the news that AMC’s The Walking Dead pulled in over 12 million viewers on the 2013 mid-season premiere, a question has to be asked. Is The Walking Dead the most popular show on television? While 12 million viewers is certainly a record for the show, AMC and all of cable television and there are plenty of networks that would love to have these numbers, major networks do see these types of numbers from time to time. So why can you make the argument that The Walking Dead is the most popular show on television. Let’s examine the facts.

The Grammy’s

The Grammy’s is one of the most popular shows watched each year. This year the Grammy’s pulled in an impressive 28 million viewers, but that was down from 40 million viewers in 2012. The Walking Dead’s 12.3 viewers seemed to be the biggest competition for Grammy viewers as the AMC cult hilt scored impressive results in the 18-49 year old age group. The Grammy’s counts on the 18-49 group as the mainstay of the telecast and losing almost 8 million viewers to a cable telecast is unheard of.

Network Giants

Another great point to look at when looking at the popularity of The Walking Dead is to compare the mid-season premiere numbers to most popular shows on network television’s averages. The 12 million Walking Dead fans outscored the averages for popular shows like Modern Family, NCIS and Two and a Half Men. While The Walking Dead was breaking another record, popular shows like Revenge and Once Upon A Time hit series lows. Now the network will argue that this was just one episode of The Walking Dead and it’s not fair to compare to seasonal averages for the network shows and this brings us to the next point of interest.

Cable vs. Networks

The most impressive feat that The Walking Dead has accomplished is the fact that it draws all of these viewers in on cable television. While ABC, CBS and NBC draw some huge viewership numbers, they do this on basically free television. There are many cable television packages that don’t include AMC. In fact, Dish Network lost the rights to AMC for several months during 2012. Many Dish Network customers lodged complaints to get the network back on the air.

In conclusion, it’s very hard to say that the AMC hit is the most popular show on television because frankly there’s no way to measure the popularity of a cable show against a network show on a fair scale. Furthermore, the major networks will come up with statistics to show that their most popular shows are the most popular on TV. No matter the case or the statistics, one thing we can say is that Walking Dead fans are spreading as fast as the fictional epidemic catalyst for the show and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down at all.

Source:

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/

Brian Hopkins is a writer that has covered various stories in the worlds of finance, sports and entertainment. Follow Brian Hopkins on Twitter @thebrianhopkins.