‘The Walking Dead” is now officially among the TV elite.
Those 16.1 million fans who watched Sunday’s Season Four opener put “The Walking Dead” in rarefied company with TV heavyweights like NFL football and “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS.
That’s heady company for any series — let alone one airing on cable (AMC).
“The Walking Dead’s” eye-popping numbers are also the talk of an industry trying to explain just how — and why — this gory, blood-soaked zombie-apocalypse drama has roused such passions among a fan base crossing all demographic lines.
“It’s amazing how such a graphic show, and what was assumed to be a male show, is growing, and growing in women [viewers],” said one rival industry exec — while another industry insider attributes the show’s meteoric rise to one growing trend: binge-watching.
“People continue to discover it,” he said. “They binge it, they watch it on Netflix, they watch it on VOD.”
While Netflix doesn’t provide viewing data for any of its titles, it does have all previous seasons of “The Walking Dead” available on its streaming video service — including the most recent (third) season, which was released on Netflix Sept. 29, giving viewers two weeks of “binge time” to catch up before the Season Four premiere.
Netflix also licenses “The Walking Dead” exclusively — meaning the show does well enough to warrant Netflix paying a premium for those exclusive streaming rights.
“People want to see it contemporaneously,” said one observer. “If you watched [‘The Walking Dead’] on VOD you’ve done it not because you want to wait another six months to watch again — you’ve done it because you want to be part of that pop culture conversation.”
And a lot of people want in on that conversation.
“The Walking Dead” increased its viewership by nearly 4 million from last season’s finale to Sunday’s season premiere.
In doing so, it joined an exclusive group — including the ninth-season premiere of “Two and a Half Men.” In September 2011, 29 million viewers — more than double the number who watched the previous season’s finale — tuned in to see Charlie Sheen’s character, Charlie Harper, killed off and replaced by Ashton Kutcher’s Walden Schmidt.
(The volatile Sheen was axed from the hit sitcom the previous spring after a much-publicized blowup with series creator Chuck Lorre.)
ABC’s “Modern Family” saw viewership jump by over 4 million in its fourth season premiere, while “The Big Bang Theory” added 3.5 million viewers and AMC’s “Breaking Bad” 3.1 million viewers from their season finales to the following season premieres.
Oh, and “BB” creator Vince Gilligan attributed his show’s viewership increase to people finding the show on Netflix.
So for a series that’s gone through three showrunners in its four-season history, “The Walking Dead” is not only defying the odds — it’s reveling in them.
It’s enough to make rival network execs lose their heads.
Call it life imitating art.