Cable ratings giant The Walking Dead has some healthy competition on its very own network.

AMC’s latest drama, Into the Badlands, premiered Sunday, Nov. 15 to 8.2 million viewers, adding another 5.1 million in Live +3 ratings.

That makes the new show the No. 3 cable series launch of all time among adults 18-49 and adults 25-54. With those numbers, Into the Badlands joins Better Call Saul and Fear the Walking Dead as the year’s top cable premieres (across all of cable, not just AMC).

Earlier this year, Better Call Saul premiered to 6.9 million viewers, and Fear the Walking Dead broke ratings records with 10.1 million viewers.

Sunday night’s lead-in, The Walking Dead, earned 17 million viewers in Live +3 ratings, helping the new drama along.

​“We wanted Into the Badlands to be a fun, ‘grab your popcorn, lean back and be flat-out entertained’ experience,” said Charlie Collier, president of AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios in a statement. “Thanks to co-creators and showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar, our fantastic team of executive producers and a tough, talented and tireless cast and crew, we now live in a world with artfully crafted and visually stunning martial arts fight sequences unlike anything else on television. Here’s to five more weeks of high-flying, genre-bending action.”

Brief Take: AMC may have taken a brief moment to worry about ratings after losing Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but those worries are long gone now, proving that fans of the cable brand will keep coming back to new dramas on the network.

[Image courtesy of AMC]

Tags:


  Save as PDF