Why The Walking Dead Is Losing Viewers (Despite Season 9 Being Better)

Although only three episodes in, The Walking Dead season 9's ratings are looking to be a new low for the show. This is despite the season itself proving to be a marked improvement on the last couple of years of AMC's zombie thriller.

Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead, "Warning Signs", received just 5 million viewers, with the show’s performance in the key 18-49 demographic in particular decaying faster than one of the show’s walkers, hitting an all-time low of 1.9m, a fall of 50% from the same time last year, and a continuation of the slide that has seen the show go from over 17m people watching the season 7 premiere to less than half that now.

The general consensus, however, seems to be that The Walking Dead is better now: new showrunner Angela Kang has taken a back to basics approach, with the look and feel more reminiscent of the earlier days; The Walking Dead season 9 actually feels like it’s building towards something, rather than the protracted All Out War storyline; and with Andrew Lincoln’s pending departure, there’s a genuine sense of emotion. So just why is the show continue to lose its once loyal and rabid fandom despite the uptick in quality?

This Page: Problems With The Walking Dead Hurting Ratings
Page 2: Why The Walking Dead's Ratings Aren't As Bad As They Seem

The Walking Dead Has Been Running For Too Long

The easiest and most obvious answer to the ratings decline is a simple one: The Walking Dead has been on longer than a TV drama would typically run. Its AMC peers, Breaking Bad and Mad Men, both of which are held up as shining examples of TV's Golden Age, ran for five and seven seasons respectively, and that's more in line with the standard viewers might expect.

It's especially difficult to maintain quality control for so many years, which has resulted in the last couple of seasons of The Walking Dead, which has often fluctuated slightly in this regard anyway, taking a much bigger dive. Contrast to, say, Game of Thrones, where there's a clear end goal in sight, and TWD's length instead becomes a source of frustration; it has increasingly looked like the show will simply run and run with no clear end in sight, meaning viewers, without the promise of closure, end up growing tired and dropping off.

Most TV shows start reasonably high in the ratings, climb over a couple of years, and then begin to dip again, and for such long-running dramas that's only magnified: take Grey's Anatomy as an example, which at its peak had a viewership of 20m, which was in the top 10 most-watched shows in the U.S, and is now half that in season 14. There's only so much of a serialized drama fans will watch, as The Walking Dead is discovering.

Season 9 Is Better... But Only In Some Ways

The Walking Dead - Rick and Daryl in The Obliged

As mentioned, The Walking Dead has improved in season 9. On IMDb, the first four episodes of the new run hold ratings of 7.5, 8.0, and 8.2, and 8.8 respectively, in comparison to 6.9, 6.7, and 6.3, and 6.8 from the same stretch of episodes last year. While it's not back to the level it was around the end of season 4/start of season 5, it's a considerable upturn, and fans and critics both agree the show is the best it's been in a good couple of years.

Angela Kang has breathed fresh life into the series, and "Warning Signs", despite the bad ratings, was a legitimately good episode. However, it's not like everything is magically fixed. There's still the concern that the series has 16 episodes in its season, and whether or not its storyline can fill that. It's also evident there's no end goal, meaning that whatever happens, the show is going to struggle to go in truly new directions beyond the survivors battling the next new evil, and switching between hope and despair and back again. And the series has already burned a number of bridges in that regard over the years.

There's the matter of its cast, too: while Andrew Lincoln's Rick and Lauren Cohan's Maggie have taken center stage this year, both are leaving soon. The likes of Daryl (Norman Reedus), Carol (Melissa McBride), and Michonne (Danai Gurira) are all getting a good amount of screen time too, but look beyond those, who have been the core of the show for so long, and there aren't too many characters who've been fleshed out or for audiences to really care about. And, of course, The Walking Dead season 9 still struggles to balance its sprawling cast. It may be better, but that's in contrast to the show's nadir, rather than comparative to its peak, which obviously isn't good enough for many (now former) viewers).

Page 2: Why The Walking Dead's Ratings Aren't As Bad As They Seem

AMC Premiere May Skew Views

Traditional ratings metrics paint a negative picture for The Walking Dead, but it's not necessarily all doom and gloom. AMC launched their own subscription-based streaming service, AMC Premiere, last year, and are giving it a big push with The Walking Dead for Season 9.

AMC Premiere offers the show to subscribers ad-free, and has been making episodes available prior to regular broadcast, giving die-hard fans the chance to get ahead of the game and see episodes early, without having to sit through adverts either. It's unclear just how many people are watching on Premiere, but there's an incentive there for Walking Dead fans which will be eating at least a little into its viewership. As we've seen with a number of cable networks, getting people to sign-up for their own services, rather than relying on ads, is key to long-term strategy (e.g. Twin Peaks: The Return for Showtime), as to shift some Walking Dead viewers there might look bad in the ratings, but could have some payoff down the line.

The Walking Dead Is Still Doing Well For AMC

Walking Dead season 9 premiere - Rick Judith and Michonne

Even ignoring the impact AMC Premiere is having upon viewership, and setting aside the dramatic drop-off in ratings over the last couple of years, it's worth considering that, by AMC's usual standards, The Walking Dead is actually in decent shape.

The network's other big horror offering this year, The Terror, didn't even make it to 2m viewers for most of its episodes, despite an impressive cast and plenty of critical acclaim. It's a similar story for AMC's other offerings too: Into The Badlands, Preacher, Better Call Saul, and TWD's sister show Fear The Walking Dead all struggle to get even half of what The Walking Dead does. It looks even better with delayed viewings factored in too, with last week's "Warning Signs" rising from 1.9 among 18-49s to 3, making it the highest-rated scripted drama on cable for that week.

It may not be the all-conquering behemoth it once was, and this is also offset by the fact it's more expensive than the others, especially with big new contracts for its stars, but for AMC it's still the ratings getter.

Genre Shows Don't Get Massive Ratings (Outside Of Game Of Thrones)

But all of this ignores one key argument: The Walking Dead should never have had the success it did. It's a show about zombies, airing on basic cable, based on a series of comic books made from outside the Marvel/DC dichotomy, and contains a whole lot of gore, violence, and death.

That isn't, generally speaking, the kind of show with a broad appeal. Indeed, just look at AMC's Preacher, which ticks most of those same boxes - swap out zombies for a man with the voice of God and a vampire - and you find a series already dipping below 1m viewers in its third season. Preacher is particularly weird, but it's more in line with what's expected of such genre shows. Starz's Ash vs Evil Dead was canceled after three seasons due to negative ratings, while comic book shows, even from Marvel and DC, such as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Arrow, and The Flash, can't compete with the kind of figures The Walking Dead achieves.

The problem, of course, is that it reached such a high-level, thanks to a mix of critical acclaim, word-of-mouth, and watercooler moments. Its rise ran parallel to Game of Thrones and, for a time, they were genuinely battling it out. Thrones, however, has proved to be an outlier in a number of ways, not only by being a fantasy series with tens of millions of viewers, but one that keeps on growing the longer it keeps on going. Other genre shows don't fare half-as-well, and if The Walking Dead were to launch now, in the crowded marketplace of Peak TV, its ratings might be considered a success.

As it is, though, it's a show that has dropped off from nearly 20m to just a quarter of that amount in the space of a couple of years, and apart from a potential short-term gain for Rick Grimes' final two episodes, it doesn't look like halting the decline anytime soon, no matter how good Season 9 might prove to be.

Next: Rick's Last Episode Trailer Teases Shane's Return

The Walking Dead season 9 airs Sundays on AMC.