CBR: "Walking Dead" Premiere Draws Record 7.3 Million Viewers

[CBR News]

The second-season premiere of "The Walking Dead" attracted 7.3 million viewers in its first airing, a 38-percent increase from its series debut. It also set a cable record for viewers in the adults 18-49 demo.


Full article here.

[SpideyCzar]

So glad the long delay between seasons didn't hurt any excitement for this show.

[Surtur]

So glad the long delay between seasons didn't hurt any excitement for this show.

Hopefully Mad Men will turn out the same way..

[maniacmatt]

Very well deserved. And man, last night's ending...

[the goddamn batman]

maybe they can get some of their budget back?

[DonC]

maybe they can get some of their budget back?

Ha!

Anyway, this means the show's record of having it's ratings go up with every new episode is still intact. That's damned impressive.

[the goddamn batman]

much akin to it's comic counterpart.

seriously, you cut the budget and fired the show runner of one of the strongest performing cable shows ever. what the fuck, AMC?

[DonC]

much akin to it's comic counterpart.

seriously, you cut the budget and fired the show runner of one of the strongest performing cable shows ever. what the fuck, AMC?

From what I read here, AMC was looking for a reason to get rid of Frank Darabont because he was difficult to work with. They also say AMC told the producers before Season 1 even started that they wanted to cut the budget.

[wildclaw]

much akin to it's comic counterpart.

seriously, you cut the budget and fired the show runner of one of the strongest performing cable shows ever. what the fuck, AMC?

The ratings are very encouraging, I hope the powers that be at AMC restores and add to the show's lost budget when they renew it for season 3.

It still baffles me why they allocated so much of the network's programming budget to Mad Men when it averages lower ratings than both Breaking Bad and this show. And to top it off, TWD is AMC produced show that will make AMC more money long term. MM is produced by an outside studio, so AMC won't get a cut of the extra revenue streams it will make.

Whichever Executive gave the okay to up Mad Men's budget should have their salary cut and have the difference added to the Walking Dead for that kind of stupidity. The creator got a 30 mil deal, and he negotiated away 1.5mil budget cuts per season in the original contract talks, so pretty much the MM creator hustled AMC which in turn hurt TWD.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_841841.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_843409.html

[DonC]

The Mad Men fight ended with the show getting more money in exchange for making the episodes shorter so the network can add commercial time. With The Walking Dead, the network has said from Day 1 that the show's budget was too high.

[wildclaw]

The Mad Men fight ended with the show getting more money in exchange for making the episodes shorter so the network can add commercial time. With The Walking Dead, the network has said from Day 1 that the show's budget was too high.

This is what the second article I posted states:

The network insisted that the show cut two minutes per episode for more advertising time; the contract calls for the first and last episode of the show to be the normal 47 minutes. For episodes 2-11, they will initially air as 45 minute episodes, and Weiner's "Final Cut" will be available digitally 8 days later.

I don't see why they couldn't have done the same with TWD since it kills everything else ratings-wise on cable. It wouldn't take much more effort to sell 4 more 30 sec spots for the highest rated show on cable. They could have just cut a few minutes from each episode and put them back in when it releases online and on dvd. Doing that would give some people more incentive to double dip and buy the episode on the internet, or even more to buy the DVD just to see the uncut footage.

[Light Yagami]

i am glad to hear the show doing well more veiwers more budget in the future

[batGRRRl4ever]

If after such a strong second season showing AMC continues to try to hobble the program (actually recommending that zombies be heard and not seen to make production cheaper, etc.) then the fools will have earned to NOT become an actual network, period. This show is a ratings goldmine but I guess AMC would rather prefer to invest in some dusty rat-pack retro show (MM) "'cause it's cool".

[wildclaw]

Does anyone know how many episodes of season 2 did Darabont complete before he was fired?

[Libaax]

Poor those 7.3 million people getting a watered down version of TWD ;)

If 10% of them read the trades, they will get more hardcore,grim series.