HBO’s ‘Game Of Thrones’ Holds Up Well In Week 2 Ratings
Last night’s second episode of Game of Thrones‘ second season drew 3.8 million viewers at 9 PM, retaining virtually all of the viewership for the HBO fantasy series’ second season premiere (3.9 million viewers), which was a series high. For the night, including the 11 PM encore, GOT averaged 4.9 million viewers. That is slightly higher than that 4.8 million viewers who watched the second season premiere at 9 PM and 11 PM last Sunday, though HBO also had a third airing at 10 PM then, bringing the total viewership for the night to 6.3 million. Also holding steady were AMC’s Mad Men (2.8 million, down a tenth from last week) and The Killing (1.8 million, flat)
I love watching Kit Harrington, curious to see what is going to happen with Jon Snow. Show is brilliant.
Never has the slogan ‘It’s not TV, it’s HBO’ felt more true than when I watch this show on HBOGO with the interactive features. Truly, truly amazing.
Do they release or include the viewership stats on HBOGO?
Yet, still no renewal for season 3? Were they hoping for higher numbers? I thought I read somewhere that their target was 4M.
If youre any fans of the book, the producers really need to plan out season 3 and 4. Therefor it would be best if the show would either air seasong 3 and 4 not long after each, or to have season 3 or 4 even bigger than the 10 episodes. This is also something that HBO must think and talk back and forth with the producers on.
This will also likely have some delay because contract-negotiations, because the producers might only be contracted for 3 season at first. Therefor, a deal for season 4 might also come at the same time. If not, the show will be renewed for two seasons this year.
Just my two cents about it, if you catch my drift. Sorry about my spelling and such. Im a norwegian, this is not my first language.
It’s hard to believe there are only 3.8M watching this show: it seems like everyone I know watches. I know several who bought HBO just for it. And it dominates the Interwebz too (GetGlue, Twitter, Facebook).
The show is destination viewing for a lot of hardcore fanboys (like myself).
I wonder how many people are throwing GoT parties where 10 people are watching one feed.
This is the golden age or torrents and various online outlets (including GO and iTunes). I am willing to bet the viewership is almost double what HBO claims because of the many ways to obtain, view/share this amazing show.
“It’s hard to believe there are only 3.8M watching this show: it seems like everyone I know watches.”
That’s because they’re not watching it live on HBO, they’re either watching it on HBO Go or downloading it from pirate sites. The majority of its target audience isn’t going to pay ~$70/month for cable and HBO when they’re so accustomed to the age of the free. That being said, I’m sure many would subscribe to a standalone HBO Go-like service if ever offered.
That’s exactly what they need to do. Many people will never get cable – it makes no sense to have an app only for people with cable, when they could just do an online-only subscription. Plus that way they wouldn’t be sharing a cut with a cable company either. Or at the very least, sell the episodes on iTunes or other online. People would be happy to pay for these but when (outside of getting cable) that’s not an option, there are no other legal ways to watch and they’re going to be giving up a lot of money that people would be happy to pay.
Bigger issue with books 4 and 5 which are the same timeline, but different viewpoints. They were supposed to be 1 book
Television has never been this good in years, especially for AMC. What I don’t understand is the networks recent choices for reality programming. Can that draw in comparable ratings for the network?
HBO really needs to start making this show officially available to the rest of the world the day after its US debut for a nominal fee. Fans don’t want to wait six-plus months for the discs and have to avoid fan sites and GoT news.
Gibbs, mouse, you’re both wrong. Pull up a torrent for the latest episode, and the vast majority of downloaders are from outside the US. I dont blame them one bit, as I used to do the same for Doctor Who eps, instead of waiting six months to a year later for an American network to rebroadcast new eps. Once BBC Anerica began broadcasting day and date as the UK, however, I stopped. If HBO would make new episodes available online through HBO GO or iTunes for viewers outside the US a day or so after airing here, even at a nominal fee, piracy would drop dramatically.
Pirates don’t pirate because they are cheap, they do it because they are sick of artificial delays, and not being able to watch when and how they want to. Studies have shown this repeatedly, and one day the industry is going to figure that out and remove any incentive to pirate.