Cancellation Watch: The Walking Dead Goes Out on Top, Game of Thrones Renewed for S4, and Could the Revolution be Ending?

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The Walking Dead had its Season 3 finale this last Sunday, pulling a monster 6.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic with a whopping 12.4 million total viewers.  That more than doubled the 3.0 rating that History Channel's finale to The Bible pulled and left the The Vikings (1.3 rating) in the dust.  And actually the third highest rated cable entry for the night as the wrap up/discussion show The Talking Dead which pulled a 2.6 rating.  That show actually outpaced all of the regular broadcast network shows for Sunday night (which were mostly repeats including ABC's Once Upon A Time), with only the bleed-over from the basketball game on CBS managing to do better.

And the Season 3 debut of HBO's Game of Thrones provided another victory for cable as that show rose to a series high of a 2.4 rating in the 18-49 demo and 4.4 million viewers.  It was the fourth ranked cable show and it outpaced everything on the broadcast nets except basketball and 60 Minutes.   And not surprisingly, HBO already announced yesterday that Game of Thrones would be returning for a fourth season as cable continues to make strong inroads on Prime Time television and erode the relevancy of the broadcast networks.

And with that in mind, NBC's Revolution sunk to a series low of a 2.2 rating in the 18-49 demo with 6.4 million viewers.  That's a drop of almost 12% from last week's episode when the series returned from its four month hiatus and it also lost 53% of the 4.7 rating of its lead-in The Voice.  Revolution did have to contend with the 100th episode of Castle over on ABC, which matched its 2.2 rating.  But that wasn't much competition, and it indicates a troublesome trend for the show.  It's still NBC's top rated scripted show for the season, based on season-to-date averages, and that network in general has few scripted shows performing well these days.  If Revolution continues to sink, though, it will be approaching bubble territory.  I still consider it mostly safe at this point, but it really needs to edge those numbers back to the 2.5 range.

Over on FOX, The Following sunk again to a 2.2 rating with 6.6 million total viewers.  That's still a decent enough number for that show, especially considering the competition it currently has from The Voice over on NBC.  And it's already been renewed for a second season anyway.

For the Monday cable shows, Bates Motel slipped a tick to a 1.2 rating with 2.8 million total viewers.  Those are still good numbers for A&E and I wouldn't be surprised to hear of an early renewal for this one in the next couple of weeks. And on Syfy, Being Human had a 0.5 rating with 1.1 million total viewers.  About in line with what it has had for most of the current season.

Tomorrow night, NBC's Hannibal has its debut, so keep an eye on the Cancellation Watch Twitter Site for the early numbers for that one as well as the rest of this week's shows, and you can see the Cancellation Alert status of all the shows currently airing plus the final results from prior seasons at my Cancellation Watch page.  And for questions on how the ratings work and my Cancellation Alert statuses, you can see the Cancellation Watch FAQ.

Ratings Source: TV by the Numbers

Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2013 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.

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