Season 3 Of ‘The Walking Dead’ Premieres To HUGE Numbers

As most of you know, AMC’s popular adaptation of the ongoing Image series The Walking Dead premiered its third season last night.

I’m hearing pretty good things about the premiere. I gave up on the show partway through Season 2 (come on, admit how boring it was), but upon reading all the positive reviews may have to give the series another chance. Our writer Scott liked it, commenting via twitter that “The season premiere of The Walking Dead was better than the entirety of season 2”. Sounds pretty good to me.

AMC must be having some sort of celebration today, as the huge amount of viewers that tuned in to last night’s airing was just revealed. Over 10 million viewers tuned into the first showing, an over 50% increase from last season, as well as breaking the record for the most watched basic cable telecast ever.

From the press release:

Last night, AMC premiered season three of “The Walking Dead” and outdelivered cable and broadcast hits including “Hatfields & McCoys,” “Jersey Shore,” “Modern Family,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “The Voice.”

The 9pm ET premiere garnered 10.9 million viewers and a 7.4 HH rating making it the highest rated episode in series history, and growing more than 50% over last season’s premiere. The season 3 premiere now reigns as the biggest telecast for any drama series in basic cable history among all viewers. “The Walking Dead” encored at 10pm with 3.5 million viewers and midnight with 850,000 viewers delivering 15.2 million viewers for the night.

Looks like Zombie fever has never been stronger. Let’s hope they’ll all check out the Geekscape co-produced Doc of the Dead when it hits too!