Advanced Television

Walking Dead viewing record for Fox UK

December 4, 2014

By Nik Roseveare

walking-dead-glennThe Walking Dead Season 5 has proven to be a ratings-hit for Fox UK, breaking several viewing-figure records for the channel and achieving its biggest ever audience numbers.

Consolidated data reveals premières of the horror drama averaged 1.3 million viewers, and a total of 2 million viewers watched each episode including repeat viewings*.  The premières of The Walking Dead episodes one to six were the six highest rating multichannel shows in pay TV at 9pm on Mondays according to consolidated data.

The première of episode one launched on Monday 13th October and achieved the highest overnight ratings in the channel’s history with 792,000 viewers.

Cecilia Beacon, Director of Broadcasting and Marketing, FIC UK, commented: “The continued ratings success of The Walking Dead shows the huge appeal for this high-quality and thrilling drama.  With a dedicated and passionate fan base, our programming strategy of airing just 24 hours after the US has proven to be a huge hit with viewers.”

Further research shows that social media has proven to be a key factor in allowing fans to interact. The Walking Dead generated the second highest number of Tweets of any UK TV show on the day it premiered (October 13th 2014). With a unique audience on Twitter of 812,707 viewing related tweets, The Walking Dead was ahead of the UK launch of Gotham and other series according to data published by Kantar’s new Twitter TV Ratings service.

The first three episodes of The Walking Dead in the UK generated 5,271,411 impressions across Twitter. The success of The Walking Dead meant that Fox in October was the number 1 pay-TV channel for number of tweets generated.

The Walking Dead Season 5 was simultaneously launched in all 125 Fox channel markets. The second half of Season 5 will air in February 2015.

Categories: Articles, Content, Social Media