The Walking Dead‘s season finale had solid ratings boost on Sunday, bringing the show’s largest same-day audience in over two years. Yellowstone‘s record-breaking fifth season premiere cooled slightly but still earned the night’s greatest non-sports viewership, while the World Cup got off to a strong start for Fox Sports and Telemundo.
The Walking Dead‘s final episode received 2.27 million viewers, a far cry from its zenith in the mid-2010s but the highest first tune-in since Feb. 28, 2021.
The finale saw a 66 percent increase over the same-day average (1.37 million) for the last several episodes this autumn and a 37 percent increase over the season 11 average overall. The show’s 0.66 rating among adults 18-49 for the episode was also its highest since February 28, 2021.
5.03 million viewers watched the third episode of Yellowstone on the Paramount Network while 8.83 million watched it on CMT (801,000). Even while it fell short of the series high of 12 million+ viewers for its Nov. 13 debut (which was simultaneously shown across a number of Paramount Global networks), it nevertheless beat out CBS’ The Equalizer to claim the title of Sunday’s best entertainment program (6.36 million).
