Game of Thrones Ratings Climb

[Westeros]

Via James Hibberd at EW, we now have the numbers for this past Sunday’s episode: 2.6 million viewers, up from last week, with 3.3 million viewers after the encore performance is factored in and a 8.1 million viewer per-episode average to date. Good numbers!

The news is slightly less rosy in the U.K., in that it seems Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic actually dropped down to 522,000, losing almost all of the 20% gain from the last week. We’re guessing last week’s number was anomalous, perhaps related to the holiday weekend, and factoring it out it looks like the show’s climbed a little bit compared to the week before last. These numbers are still quite strong for the fledgling number, putting it on par with some of their very top broadcasts.

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[Yoadm]

Via James Hibberd at EW, we now have the numbers for this past Sunday’s episode: 2.6 million viewers, up from last week, with 3.3 million viewers after the encore performance is factored in and a 8.1 million viewer per-episode average to date. Good numbers!

The news is slightly less rosy in the U.K., in that it seems Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic actually dropped down to 522,000, losing almost all of the 20% gain from the last week. We’re guessing last week’s number was anomalous, perhaps related to the holiday weekend, and factoring it out it looks like the show’s climbed a little bit compared to the week before last. These numbers are still quite strong for the fledgling number, putting it on par with some of their very top broadcasts.

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So, in other words, a 4% increase in the US over last week versus a 20% decrease in the UK?

[red snow]

So, in other words, a 4% increase in the US over last week versus a 20% decrease in the UK?

I know which one is more important for the survival of the show.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

So, in other words, a 4% increase in the US over last week versus a 20% decrease in the UK?

The upward spike in UK ratings during the previous week was probably an outlier. Even with the drop it's still performing extremely well (relatively speaking) on Sky.

[Padraig]

Overall very good news. And given the strength of the last episode, we should hopefully continue to see numbers go up. The question was always whether people would keep watching (with all the learning that entailed) but if they have survived 5 episodes, it should now be getting a head of steam. Its drama all the way to the end now. :)

[Spionkop]

Half a million for sky is quite good. They only get big numbers for sports really, most people still watch the four main channels.

[Yoadm]

The upward spike in UK ratings during the previous week was probably an outlier. Even with the drop it's still performing extremely well (relatively speaking) on Sky.

That's good to know. I feared that the fall in ratings might be a result of something else. Here's hoping the season final passes the 3 million Mark in the US.

[The Anti-Targ]

I imagine if they see the season out with a weekly average of over 8 million they'll be well pleased. Release the Blu-ray/DVDs a month before season 2 and we should see a decent increase in ratings for season 2.

Memo to HBO: put the whole season on 1 Blu-ray please, I'm running out of disc storage space. Though if needed for 1080p & 7.1 surround sound quality you may put it on 2 discs, but only in one disc case!

[lokisnow]

Memo to HBO: put the whole season on 1 Blu-ray please, I'm running out of disc storage space. Though if needed for 1080p & 7.1 surround sound quality you may put it on 2 discs, but only in one disc case!

One bluray would result in a heavily compressed mess, though you could certainly fit the whole season on one bluray if you wanted the show in 480p standard def.

The bluray will probably have 3-4 discs, depending. The pilot runs a little longer, so probably eps 1-3 on disc one, eps 4-7 on disc 2 and eps 8-10 on disc 3. Hopefully it will be on four discs though, which will result in better picture quality.

[Kese]

Fantasy drama Game Of Thrones had 626k (2.6%) on Sky Atlantic from 9pm.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a321205/strangeways-concludes-with-55m-on-itv1.html

[Werthead]

Interesting. According to BARB Episode 4's adjusted ratings came in at 1.352m, a significant drop on the previous week's 1.584m. This is despite Episode 4 getting the highest overnights to date of 628,000.

[Kese]

Interesting. According to BARB Episode 4's adjusted ratings came in at 1.352m, a significant drop on the previous week's 1.584m. This is despite Episode 4 getting the highest overnights to date of 628,000.

Could be that those who saw episode 3 later were 'hooked' and decided to watch next episode's first airing.

[Abaddon]

Wonder where the US ratings for Episode 6 are, usually they are posted by now.

[EDIT] Or, not. I guess my brain is still scrambled from the weekend, they usually come out Tuesday afternoon...

[The Imp's Advocate]

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/05/24/game-of-thrones-ratings-6/

They dropped a bit. 2.4 for the premiere, 3.2 total.

[Spring Bass]

I expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth due to the drop.

[Padraig]

Surprise indeed. And the ratings next week will be difficult to judge because it has already been shown on HBO Go. So not great news.

[The Anti-Targ]

One bluray would result in a heavily compressed mess, though you could certainly fit the whole season on one bluray if you wanted the show in 480p standard def.

The bluray will probably have 3-4 discs, depending. The pilot runs a little longer, so probably eps 1-3 on disc one, eps 4-7 on disc 2 and eps 8-10 on disc 3. Hopefully it will be on four discs though, which will result in better picture quality.

4 discs?? You're saying that the whole series plus extras will be between 200 to 270 GB? Wow, that's a lot. I guess 1080p isn't just 2.25*480p. I would have thought if std def dolby stereo can fit onto 4 DVD's then HD 7.1 surround sound should be able to fit on 2 dual layer 66GB Blu-rays.

Interesting that there was a wee drop. Need to see total week's number though not just Sunday night. Could be a bit of audience fatigue. People might have got to the end of Ep5 and decided the series wasn't for them after all. Perhaps they were put off by Theon's limp-on.

[Arya The Assassin]

4 discs?? You're saying that the whole series plus extras will be between 200 to 270 GB? Wow, that's a lot.

I totally agree with lockesnow here. One disc would be quite insufficient: If you wanted to cram all 10 episodes plus extras onto one BD50 disc, the compression would be too high and the image quality would suffer significantly. Other HBO-shows have been released on at least 3-4 BD50 discs, and I definitely think this is the way to go.

I guess 1080p isn't just 2.25*480p.

10 episodes on a BD50 disc would mean that each episode would have to be compressed to less than 5 GB. If you cram a HD-audio track and a few foreign language tracks onto the disc as well, you won't have a lot of space left for video. In practice the size would have to be even lower, since the bonus material would also consume space.

Now compare this to True Blood: This 12 episode series was released on 5 BD-discs (a mix of BD25 and BD50). Average size for each episode was approximately 11 GB. If they wanted to keep the same bitrate and image/sound quality for GoT, you'd end up with at least 3 discs (just for the episodes themselves). Feature films on BD50's usually occupy more than 30 GB of storage space (or about 15 GB per hour).

I would have thought if std def dolby stereo can fit onto 4 DVD's then HD 7.1 surround sound should be able to fit on 2 dual layer 66GB Blu-rays.

Keep in mind that the maximum bitrate for Dolby Digital (DD) is only 640 Kb/s, while the maximum bitrate for DTS-HD Master Audio (DTS-MA) is 24.5 Mb/s. Multi-channel HD-audio tracks need much more space (in practice, the DTS-MA bitrate is typically somewhere between 3 and 5 Mb/s). HBO has released all their other shows (AFAIK) with at least one DTS-MA track, and it would be a huge disappointment if they didn't do the same thing for GoT.

A dual-layer BD disc (BD50) is 50 GB (approx. 47 gibibyte), BTW :)

Interesting that there was a wee drop. Need to see total week's number though not just Sunday night. Could be a bit of audience fatigue. People might have got to the end of Ep5 and decided the series wasn't for them after all. Perhaps they were put off by Theon's limp-on.

I don't think the drop was significant. It could have been other things not directly related to the show (sports, news or other TV series) that affected the viewership numbers. And besides, the encore numbers were approximately the same as last week. So I don't see any reason to worry. I'd worry more if it becomes a trend, though :)

[Faint]

I'm actually pretty sure the ratings drop was simply due to Bulls-Heat. That said, it might not get better next week because some fans -- including me -- have already seen the show.

[The Anti-Targ]

A dual-layer BD disc (BD50) is 50 GB (approx. 47 gibibyte), BTW :)

Ah, I thought I'd read that the BR disc had been expanded to 33GB per layer recently. Perhaps the movie industry hasn't adopted it yet. I've read somewhere that the BR disc will eventually reach 50GB per layer.

19 Gig per episode (with extras) sounds like a lot (4 discs). 14 gig per episode (3 discs) seems reasonable.