The Walking Dead Premiere Shatters Ratings Records

AMC's zombie hit drew 15 million viewers for the night

By Jenna Mullins Oct 15, 2012 8:37 PMTags
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Those who said this zombie trend is on the way out (looking at you, vampires!) were wayyy off base.

The season-three premiere of The Walking Dead shattered ratings records with 10.9 million viewers, making it the most-watched episode of any drama series in basic cable history. Turns out there are a lot of people out there who want to see zombie gore, and we raise our glass to them.

Sunday's episode saw a 50 percent increase from The Walking Dead season-two finale, which was then a record-breaker as well. An additional 3.5 million viewers tuned in for the encore at 10 p.m., and another 850,000 watched at midnight, bringing the premiere's overall haul to 15.2 million for the night.

"Thank you to the fans for making The Walking Dead such a tremendous success. We are honored and humbled that television's largest adult audience resides on AMC," AMC president Charlie Collier said in a statement. "So many people on both sides of the camera worked tirelessly on this project, and I thank and congratulate each of them for their amazing contribution."

Dish Network customers were not able to tune in due to the carriage dispute with AMC, so you can only imagine what the numbers could have been with those added eyeballs. The network tried to stream the episode online for Dish subscribers missing out on the premiere, but the site crashed from the overwhelming traffic. 

The Walking Dead's next new episode airs this Sunday on AMC.