‘Thrones’ gets a warm welcome
The much-anticipated final season premiere of “Game of Thrones” drew the second-largest official audience among the 68 episodes of the HBO fantasy drama, averaging 11.76 million viewers, according to live-plus-same-day figures released by Nielsen on Tuesday.
Only the Aug. 27, 2017, seventh-season finale, the most recent episode before Sunday, was watched by more viewers on a live or same day basis, averaging 12.072 million viewers.
Including viewership on its HBO Go and HBO Now streaming services, Sunday’s eighth and final season premiere averaged 17.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched episode of the series, topping the previous record of 16.9 million for the seventh season finale, according to figures supplied by HBO.
Despite being available in far fewer households than the broadcast networks — HBO does not release its number of domestic number of subscribers — “Game of Thrones” was among just three prime-time programs between April 8 and Sunday to average more than 9 million viewers.
CBS’ coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball championship game was the week’s most-watched prime-time program, averaging 19.723 million viewers, while the CBS military procedural drama “NCIS” was second, averaging 11.824 million viewers.
Official viewership for Virginia’s 85-77 overtime victory over Texas Tech was down 14.28% from the last time the final aired on CBS, when North Carolina’s 71-65 victory over Gonzaga averaged 23.008 million viewers on April 3, 2017.
The championship game annually rotates between CBS and cable’s TBS.
Official viewership for most forms of programming is down compared with the past primarily due to increased viewership of streaming programming, including the same programs shown on traditional television.
The week’s only series premiere on the four major broadcast networks, the military procedural drama “The Code,” was fifth among the week’s broadcast and cable programs, averaging 8.137 million viewers following “NCIS,” topped only by three fellow CBS programs and “Game of Thrones.”
CBS had five of the week’s six most-watched programs to finish first in the network race for the 12th time in 13 weeks and 17th in the 29-week-old 2018-19 prime-time TV season.