The Walking Dead just keeps getting bigger. The show’s season four premiere earned a whopping 16.1 million viewers, easily topping the season three premiere.
AMC said that 10.4 million viewers in the 18-49 demographic tuned in to the 9 p.m. airing. The episode beat everything on broadcast television in the demo during the timeslot, even beating NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage. The network expects that Nielsen data will show that when time-shifted playback is taken into account, the total number of viewers could climb to 20 million.
The 16.1 million overall number shattered the previous record for the show, which was 12.4 million viewers for the season three finale. That episode drew 8.1 million in the 18-49 demo.
The season three premiere drew 10.9 million viewers overall and 7.3 million viewers in the 18-49 demo.
The Talking Dead, Chris Hardwicke’s talk show that aired right after The Walking Dead, drew 5.1 million total viewers and 3.3 million in the 18-49 demo.
AMC also claims that during the East Coast premiere, there were 39,994 tweets posted about the episode.
You can check out our recap of the season four premiere, “30 Days Without An Accident.”
image: AMC