Once upon a time, The Walking Dead was the biggest show on television and it often earned upwards of 20 million viewers on a weekly basis, breaking cable records and making AMC an insane amount of money. Well, those days are now long gone because this Sunday's episode of the Image Comics adaptation received only a 2.0 rating in the key demographic of adults 18 - 49 which is a huge drop.
In terms of actual viewership, the second episode of The Walking Dead's ninth season saw only 4.9 million tune in to see what was happening after the somewhat underwhelming premiere. While many critics have argued that the show is better now than it's been for quite some time, it appears as if too many mistakes were made last year and the departure of Andrew Lincoln really can't have helped.
There's a worrying trend here too, because last week's premiere was the lowest-rated premiere in history...coming off the season eight finale which was the lowest-rated finale in The Walking Dead's history!
While these numbers are still solid for cable, a plummet in ratings like this doesn't bode well for the future and, if nothing else, AMC may very well consider cutting the budget or more actors.