The numbers are in. AMC’s Preacher averaged a 0.9 rating in adults 18-49 and 2.4 million viewers.
Overall, these are not the numbers many expected but they are the second largest scripted launch behind FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” at 2.0. Many outlets have stated going up against Game of Thrones and being aired at 10:00 pm hurt overall ratings. We will see where we go from here. Our predictions of over 5 million viewers was way off. For comparison sake, Breaking Bad had 1.41 million viewers during the premiere.
You can get the ratings for all Preacher TV episodes here.
Original Article and Predictions
Any diehard Preacher fan likely wants to know just how many people watched the Preacher pilot. Remember, there were 5.35 million people that watched The Walking Dead pilot making it the most watched pilot in cable TV history. There is a very good chance Preacher will break that record. Here is why:
Fear the Walking Dead 4.486 had million viewers last week (their lowest viewership yet) prior to the mid season finale. We can assume the numbers will be up slightly for the mid season finale. Let’s estimate about 4.7 million people watched the Fear the Walking Dead midseason finale. To determine how many people watched Preacher let’s just use a little Google search traffic data. If they are watching, they are searching, right?
Here is a chart comparing search data of Preacher and Fear the Walking Dead:
The red line is Preacher searches and the blue line is Fear the Walking Dead searches. Preacher searches nearly doubled (100 to 57) Fear the Walking Dead searches. There is no way Preacher had double the viewers but one would think there were more people watching if more people were searching.
With this being the case, we predict around 6.5 million people watched the Preacher pilot. Anything about that would be a huge number.
Add to this that network TV viewership was very soft and we have the recipe for a great number for the Preacher pilot. Not as many people in the church pews as the die heard comic book fans would have predicted.
May 24, 2016 at 3:23 am
Your stats for Preacher are higher than Fear the Walking Dead because everyone watched Preacher because they didn’t know what it was about. Comparing the two shows and ratings makes zero sense, it’s a completely different kind of show. Preacher, what a horrible, slow and dull show! I wanted to get a gun and blow my brains out trying to follow it. I will give it one more chance then it’s off the DVR unless it gets any better. The only good part is his bad ass ex gf.
May 24, 2016 at 11:49 am
You and Arseface have more in common than you know already.
May 24, 2016 at 6:18 pm
Oh friend, if you had read the comics you would know you are in for a wild ride.