This past Sunday’s third episode of The Walking Dead season 9, ‘Warning Signs’, managed to put a halt to the audience exodus, increasing its week-on-week viewership by 2% to 5 million, but that wasn’t enough to prevent it sinking to another series low in terms of ratings.
Deadline reports that ‘Warning Signs’ scored a 1.94 in the key 18-49 demo, down from the previous week’s 2.0 rating which was itself a new series low, and down a whopping 50% from last year’s third episode of season eight. However, unlike previous seasons, this year’s episodes are being made available early on the AMC Premiere service, which will no doubt eat into the Live viewership figures.
With the impending departure of Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes – confirmed by AMC to be taking place in the fifth episode on November 4th – it will be interesting to see if The Walking Dead can claw back some of its audience over the next couple of weeks. A bump is surely expected, but whether the show can get any returning viewers to stick around post-Rick remains to be seen.
