Ratings Results: HBO’s Game of Thrones wrapped up its fourth season on Sunday pulling a 3.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 7.1 million total viewers. That was enough for the show to top all non-sports related broadcasts on the cable and broadcast networks for the week, though it fell one tick short of matching its previous record high of a 3.9 rating. However, it did set a record for illegal downloads with 1.5 million in the first twelve hours after the show aired (how do they know those numbers and are the cops heading to those peoples’ houses?) and a total of 7.5 million expected for the full week. HBO doesn’t seem to be bothered by the illegal downloads, though, as that is just another gauge of the show’s popularity and Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes claims that this is “better than an Emmy”. In any case, Game of Thrones has been renewed through its sixth season (and don’t expect it to stop there), so many more illegal downloads are on the way! Also on Sunday night, Showtime’s Penny Dreadful pulled another 0.3 rating with 680k total viewers. That’s only 8% (!) of the rating that GoT had, but the show’s numbers have been considered good enough by its network and it has already been renewed for a second season. On NBC, cancelled series Believe aired its final episode which garnered a 0.7 rating with 3.2 million total viewers. And on Monday, The CW’s Beauty and the Beast scraped up another 0.3 rating with 760k total viewers as it winds down its second season. That one has mystifyingly been renewed for a third season.
The Charts: Not much chart activity again this week with the exception of Game of Thrones. That series landed the Number 1 slot for the week in the cable Top 25 based on total viewers and took the Number 3 slot in the Nielsen Twitter Rankings. I believe that True Blood will make an appearance in the charts when it returns next week, and then Teen Wolf should return to the Nielsen Twitter Rankings when it debuts on June 23rd. Plus, CBS’ Under the Dome should make it into the broadcast net Top 25 when its second season premieres on June 30th.
All of the holdover shows from the 2013-14 season have wrapped up now with the exception of Beauty and the Beast, and the Summer season will be kicking into high gear over the next couple of weeks starting with Syfy’s premieres of Defiance and Dominion on Thursday (You can see the full Summer schedule of genre shows at this link). Keep an eye on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for the ratings results of those shows over the coming weeks.
Ratings Source: TV by the Numbers and The Futon Critic
Nielsen TV Ratings: ©2014 The Nielsen Company. All Rights Reserved.
