The season 7 ratings for the zombie apocalypse juggernaut "The Walking Dead" have rapidly decreased since the 17.03 million viewer peak achieved during the controversial season premiere cliffhanger episode, "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be," and the reasons why aren't exactly clear at the moment. Many fans tune in each week to see the blood, guts and gore offered by the zombie apocalypse show, but some have argued that the bloody deaths at the start of the season simply turned so many fans off that they've never tuned back in to the series.
The season 7 ratings decline spin
After the initial pop of ratings, not to mention the pop of Abraham and Glenn's skulls by Negan and Lucille, the show suffered a crisis of identity, straddling a fine line of both displaying visually graphic ultra violence and reconciling that approach to appeal to a mass audience. Obviously, according to many, that approach is no longer working. While "Say Yes," the twelfth episode of the season, might be the lowest Nielsen rated episode the series has seen since "Hounded" back in season three, which drew an audience of 9.21 million viewers on November 18, 2012, things aren't as bad as many in the media might want you to believe.
The ratings system is far from a perfect count
When you add in what are called Live +3 and Live +7 and DVR ratings the numbers begin to realign with previous seasons. For instance, "Say Yes," with DVR viewers added, will probably add another 5-6 million viewers when those numbers finally come in, numbers that are similar for every other season 7 episode so far. Saying that any TV show with 15-17 million viewers a week is in trouble seems a bit ridiculous when it's put into perspective. Last week on "The Big Bang Theory," one of the biggest shows on broadcast television, were just 13.077 million viewers tune in for an episode titled, "The Escape Hatch Identification." That count doesn't include DVR viewers.
The ratings for 'The Walking Dead' are fine
It's rare that ratings and rankings will always line up because the two things can be mutually exclusive. Ask anyone who has won or lost at the Oscars, because the movie that made the most money that year hardly ever wins for Best Picture. Popularity, measured by an imperfect method, is only one component of how healthy a show is in the marketplace. The nation and the world right now is distracted by political infighting, social media takeovers of our free time, and the increasing competition for our eyes and ears as new movies, shows, music, and emerging forms of entertainment continue to stretch us to the very limits of our limited time each day. All that being said, any franchise right now with more than 10 million fans should consider themselves to be in a position of power in the marketplace.
If you can't make 10 million fans help you turn a profit in this day and age, there's a problem with your product. As it would seem, there's nothing wrong with "The Walking Dead," and if the show needs some time to wind down before it winds back up, the true fans will surely be along for the ride.