Written by Jon Williams
This Sunday begins the long-awaited and highly anticipated
eighth season of the hit HBO show
Game of Thrones. The abbreviated
final season will consist of just six episodes (although four of those will run
around 80 minutes, 20 more than the typical episode) and will culminate in the
series finale on May 19. Over the course of the show’s seven seasons to date,
its ratings have continued to climb, making it one of the most-watched cable
series. With nearly two years of hype building up since the
Season
7 finale that aired on August 27, 2017, plus the anticipation of who—if
anyone—will survive to take the Iron Throne, the eighth season’s viewership
numbers are sure to set new records, and the series finale will likely go down
as one of the most watched of all time.
On network television, of course, those numbers are
untouchable. The series finale of
M*A*S*H on February 28, 1983, drew
upwards of 105 million viewers, making it the most-watched television episode
ever. The only other broadcasts that garner that type of viewership are the
Super Bowl each year. The closest any show has come since was ten years later,
with the series finale of the hit sitcom
Cheers, which came in at 84 million
on May 20, 1993. Before
M*A*S*H, the
record was held by the wrap-up of
The Fugitive on August 29, 1967,
watched by 78 million people. Rounding out the top five most-watched series
finales are two more sitcoms:
Seinfeld (May 14, 1998) with 76
million and
Friends (May 16, 2004) with 52
million. In the realm of science fiction and fantasy, the record is held by
Star Trek: The Next Generation,
which came to an end on May 23, 1994, with an audience of 31 million.
Network broadcasts, though, have always had the advantage of
being available to anyone with a television set, without the necessity of
additional equipment or subscription fees. That’s why ratings for shows airing
on cable networks are measured in a category of their own. For cable series,
the top two most-watched series finales belong to HBO, the same network that
airs
Game of Thrones. First up is the
mob drama
The Sopranos, whose controversial
blackout ending aired June 10, 2007, to 11.9 viewers. Coming in second, and
holding the top spot until
The Sopranos
came along, is
Sex and the City, which bowed to an
audience of 10.6 million on February 22, 2004. Those numbers are especially
impressive considering HBO is a premium network which has traditionally
required an additional subscription fee on top of a cable package. Then in
third place is the acclaimed AMC drama
Breaking
Bad, which, like
Game of Thrones,
started off to relatively modest ratings and then steadily built over time.
That show finished up on September 29, 2013, with 10.3 million viewers.
So how will the
Game
of Thrones finale fare? Obviously it won’t approach the numbers of network
shows like
M*A*S*H or even
Friends, but it has an excellent chance
of setting a new record for cable shows. Season 7 averaged upwards of 10
million viewers, and the season finale drew over 12 million. With anticipation
at an all-time high, the numbers for Season 8 should leave those behind easily.
And with two more novels to come in George R.R. Martin’s
novel
series and a spinoff series in production from HBO, the fever is sure to
last for years to come.