HBO Gets Series High Ratings From Game Of Thrones Season 5 Premiere
By Nick Tylwalk
Think HBO is glad that Game of Thrones is back?
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Now that the ratings are in for the show’s Season 5 premiere last Sunday, the network has to be quite pleased. Variety says the episode drew about 8 million viewers, the most ever for Game of Thrones. HBO can officially call it the most popular series on so-called premium cable, and second on cable as a whole to only AMC’s The Walking Dead.
Even better, it’s a series that is actually gathering ratings momentum as it goes, with each season showing it could deliver more eyeballs than the one before. Obviously, there’s a limit to how far that trend can continue, but in an era where many, many TV shows pop their biggest ratings numbers with their very first episodes and only go down from there, it’s fascinating to see.
HBO’s lone regret might be not making each season longer. Game of Thrones does only 10 episodes a year, which is less than half of what a full season of network TV trots out. Even The Walking Dead does 16 installments every season, though usually split by a winter break. The low number means that HBO gets to grab itself a strangle hold from mid-April through June, but then what?
It’s possible the cable giant could keep the momentum going with one of its other dramas, but its been notably quiet about its plans for dramas for the remainder of 2015. For instance, Westworld seems like the type of show that might strike the same kind of chord as Game of Thrones, albeit in a vastly different setting, but fans are still waiting to see when it’s going to debut.
While we wait to see what trick HBO might have up its sleeve for later in the year, it will be interesting to see if Game of Thrones can close any of the sizable gap between second and first place in cable ratings. The Walking Dead can claim numbers almost twice as high, so there’s still plenty of work to do for GoT to get to the top. And just like in Westeros itself, laying claim to the throne isn’t exactly an easy task.
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