TV Ratings: ‘Walking Dead’ Rises In Week 3, ‘Talking Dead’ Hits High

After a couple of weeks that saw a few ratings chomps taken out of it, the biggest show on television has bitten back. The potentially game-changing third episode of the sixth season of The Walking Dead drew 13.1 million total viewers on Sunday with 8.5 million among adults 18-49 for a 6.8 rating, according to Nielsen.

That’s an 8% rise in both its overall audience and the key demo for October 25’s episode, titled “Thank You,” compared with the October 18 airing of TWD. Unlike its Season 6 premiere, TWD won’t be beating Sunday Night Football this week among the 18-49s; in final nationals, the NBC game that saw the Carolina Panthers beat the Philadelphia Eagles scored a 7.6 rating among the demo with 20.6 million viewers overall. In fast nationals, the SNF and TWD race was very close, with the former snagging a 6.9 rating.

Compared to the third episode of Season 5 of the zombie apocalypse blockbuster, this week’s show was basically on par. The demo difference was a mere 3% dip from last year and 5% in total viewers from the 13.801 million pulled in by the October 19, 2014 episode “Four Walls And A Roof.”

Having become accustomed to breaking ratings records and suffering stock declines because of the recent results, this week’s upticks will be a balm to AMC. Of course, the cabler really puts its bets on Live+3 results for TWD. Which, with Sunday’s cliffhanger and the did he/didn’t he? death of Steven Yeun’s Glenn Rhee character, could see a surge greater than last week in delayed viewing — stay tuned.

An indication in the greater interest was displayed in the results for TWD aftershow Talking Dead this week. The Chris Hardwick-hosted series had 6.2 million total viewers with a strong demo result of 3.9 million. That’s a 44% and 49% rise, respectively, over last week’s show and the best Talking Dead has done this season so far — so really stay tuned.