protar Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 If the leaked episodes were truly the cause of the lower ratings, why did the first episode get 8 million viewers? Presumably if people just straight up weren't watching the first 4 episodes legally, we would see low numbers for the premier as well. And why did the low ratings continue for episodes 5, 6 and 7? Indeed they got worse. Why was the dip in episode 7 so much larger than the memorial day dip from Blackwater? There's really no way around it - most people didn't like this season until Episode 7/8. I guess Cersei being arrested and Tyrion meeting Dany got some good will back, and it was known that a big battle would be in E8 for those following the show. Word of that probably spread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marsyao Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 If the leaked episodes were truly the cause of the lower ratings, why did the first episode get 8 million viewers? Cary over by the previous season's suceess Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borodin Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 There's really no way around it - most people didn't like this season until Episode 7/8. IMDB ratings of episodes show that by Season 4, HBO had caught on to the fact that batle sequences were the only thing getting people jazzed up abot GoT anymore. With none on the slate for Season 5, they had to invent one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marsyao Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Episode 6 to 7 from 6.24 mil. to 5.40 mil. -840k (Now this is the holiday?) A good question you should ask is why HBO decides to air this episode on holiday? they should learn the lesson from the episode of "Blackwater bay", if HBO knows even the climax of the season 2 suffered a rating hit on a holiday weekend, why would they expect "the gift" a very much weak episode would make an exception? I would guess, after viewing the season 5, HBO knew the season 5 is weak, so by airing a weak episode on a holiday, they can have an excuse to explain the drop of the rating, and because they expect fan boys and fan girls will love the fancy big fighting scenes of the episode 8, the big rating drop of episode 7 may even be a good thing to them: a huge rating increase, that would make the management happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon in the North Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 A good question you should ask is why HBO decides to air this episode on holiday? they should learn the lesson from the episode of "Blackwater bay", if HBO knows even the climax of the season 2 suffered a rating hit on a holiday weekend, why would they expect "the gift" a very much weak episode would make an exception? I would guess, after viewing the season 5, HBO knew the season 5 is weak, so by airing a weak episode on a holiday, they can have an excuse to explain the drop of the rating, and because they expect fan boys and fan girls will love the fancy big fighting scenes of the episode 8, the big rating drop of episode 7 may even be a good thing to them: a huge rating increase, that would make the management happy They didn't show a weak episode on the holiday. The episode before it is what caused a drop in vieweres, as well as it being Memorial Day. Just like it was the episode before Hardhome that increased viewership to 7 million. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lancerman Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Well part of it is that HBO replays episodes constantly all week, including about 2 hours after it airs (on the multiple HBO channels as part of it's package), they also offer episodes on On Demand and their HBO go services. So they don't have to worry about whether they catch the premier episode. They know how many people are watching, they know how it effects their subscriptions, etc. They don't sell to advertisers so they don't need to worry about that like network television does. They just need to know that a significant amount of people are watching across all their repeats and offerings of the show and that it keeps their subscriptions up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marsyao Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 They didn't show a weak episode on the holiday. The episode before it is what caused a drop in vieweres, as well as it being Memorial Day. Just like it was the episode before Hardhome that increased viewership to 7 million. Yes the episode before it is just one of many reasons caut it drops, and yes episode 7 is a weak episode, a ridiculous one I may say. what I said about the reason why HBO put it on Holiday still stands, they knew in advance before the episode 1 was aired that the rating will suffered for episode 7, and they need a good excuse for that. The "Hardhome" is a better than its two previous episodes, but still it is an average one, nothing but a big fancy fighing scene, and that is the reason the increase of the rating, as I said fan boys and fan girls like fighing scenes, even it makes no sense Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Borodin Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 How did we get here? It was Season 2 Episode 2 that marks the turning point when HBO and the show-runners were made aware that drooling TV audiences were bored by politics that did not end in a beheading. The success of Episode 9 (Battle at Blackwater) sealed the deal. From now on, politics would always be tempered by brutality and every season would shovel it in a late episode for the masses. That's why Season 3 Episode 4 gives audiences something to grunt for in Drogon roasting the slave master. HBO couldn't wait for the Red Wedding to deliver to an increasingly impatient audience. A climax came even earlier in Season 4. Episode 2 was the Purple Wedding. They would come fast and furious after that. Episode 8 was Oberyn's head explosion and Episode 9 was devoted entirely to the Wildlings attack at the Wall. But now the show has spent all its plot currency and it must invent new battle sequences to satisfy the appetite for mayhem they cultivated in Season 4. Which brings us to Season 5, where politics at Winterfell must involve torture and rape. Like Ramsay, TV audiences find politics without brutality a tad boring. With no heads to explode, Episode 8 goes further off the rails by bringing us a completely fabricated battle sequence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Cary over by the previous season's suceess The carry over from the success of previous seasons makes people watch the episodes but doesn't necessarily dictate how they watch it. If the piracy was the cause of the low ratings we would see the same sort of viewing figures for episode 1 and then episodes 2,3 and 4. The numbers clearly indicate that a large number of people tuned in for the premiere legally but then turned off for whatever reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faint Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 If the leaked episodes were truly the cause of the lower ratings, why did the first episode get 8 million viewers? Presumably if people just straight up weren't watching the first 4 episodes legally, we would see low numbers for the premier as well. And why did the low ratings continue for episodes 5, 6 and 7? Indeed they got worse. Why was the dip in episode 7 so much larger than the memorial day dip from Blackwater? There's really no way around it - most people didn't like this season until Episode 7/8. I guess Cersei being arrested and Tyrion meeting Dany got some good will back, and it was known that a big battle would be in E8 for those following the show. Word of that probably spread. Until we get the cumulative ratings from HBO -- and the streaming "live" ratings -- it is basically impossible to make informed opinions about this issue. My impression is that ratings have plateaued, initial and cumulative, but that amounts to nothing more than a guess at this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Until we get the cumulative ratings from HBO -- and the streaming "live" ratings -- it is basically impossible to make informed opinions about this issue. My impression is that ratings have plateaued, initial and cumulative, but that amounts to nothing more than a guess at this point. It really isn't. I mean the première had 8 million views, the next episode less then 7 million. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on. There's no real reason why people would decide to watch episode 1 legitimately and then pirate episode 2 (or at least nothing that reflects favourably on the show), so we can only assume that people didn't like episode one and turned off. And more and more people continued to do so in the hundreds of thousands until episode 8. I'm not seeing what new information can change that fact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLeviathan73 Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 It really isn't. I mean the première had 8 million views, the next episode less then 7 million. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on. There's no real reason why people would decide to watch episode 1 legitimately and then pirate episode 2 (or at least nothing that reflects favourably on the show), so we can only assume that people didn't like episode one and turned off. And more and more people continued to do so in the hundreds of thousands until episode 8. I'm not seeing what new information can change that fact. I watched episode 1 live and then heard about the leaks after viewing that. I would imagine that was true for many people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLeviathan73 Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Trolls don't provide arguments. Troll. Sure they do, they provide stupid ones like you have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon in the North Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 It really isn't. I mean the première had 8 million views, the next episode less then 7 million. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on. There's no real reason why people would decide to watch episode 1 legitimately and then pirate episode 2 (or at least nothing that reflects favourably on the show), so we can only assume that people didn't like episode one and turned off. And more and more people continued to do so in the hundreds of thousands until episode 8. I'm not seeing what new information can change that fact. The leaks occurred either the day of or the day before the first episode being aired. After the airing, viewers had all weak to hear of the leaks and download them illegally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLeviathan73 Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Yeah I don't buy this. Do you actually have numbers to back this up? I bet the number HBO subscribers who downloaded the leaked episodes is just a small fraction and the majority of those downloads came from other countries that do not have access to HBO in the first place. But let's stay that is the reason for the first four episodes. Are all the weeks five to seven all some holidays?Episode 4 to 5 from 6.82 mil. to 6.56 mil. So they drop around 260k viewers.Episode 5 to 6 from 6.56 mil. to 6.24 mil. -320k.Episode 6 to 7 from 6.24 mil. to 5.40 mil. -840k (Now this is the holiday?)And then we get the Hardhome episode which jumps back to 7 mil. As others have pointed out, exact numbers are going to be very difficult because of the leaked episodes and the expanded ways in which viewership of the show is possible this year. To be clear, I'm not against the idea that the show waned in popularity this season. There have certainly been some choices made by the show and some general issues with pacing that could have cause this. So I'm not necessarily disputing the idea that there is some backlash to the show's sometimes questionable telling of the story. What I am outright rejecting as cartoonish stupidity is that the producers (who we are told by these same people think they are god's gift to game of thrones) are so worried about their own product that they concocted a battle scene MONTHS before knowing the ratings and put it in an episode (8) in which it wouldn't be expected to happen....all in the name of regrabbing ratings they didn't know would be declining. So yeah...that's stupid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon in the North Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Yes the episode before it is just one of many reasons caut it drops, and yes episode 7 is a weak episode, a ridiculous one I may say. what I said about the reason why HBO put it on Holiday still stands, they knew in advance before the episode 1 was aired that the rating will suffered for episode 7, and they need a good excuse for that. The "Hardhome" is a better than its two previous episodes, but still it is an average one, nothing but a big fancy fighing scene, and that is the reason the increase of the rating, as I said fan boys and fan girls like fighing scenes, even it makes no sense Well, the "weak" episode 7 generated an increase in viewership for episode 8 is all I'm saying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faint Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Does anyone have the HBO streaming numbers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cas Stark Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 If the leaks were the cause of the audience drop you would have seen the beginning of a rebound at episode 5, but the audience continued to drop and we only saw a rebound last week, at episode 8, so it doesn't fit that it would be the leaks as even a secondary cause since the trajectory of the audience has been down all season until last week's episode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheLeviathan73 Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 If the leaks were the cause of the audience drop you would have seen the beginning of a rebound at episode 5, but the audience continued to drop and we only saw a rebound last week, at episode 8, so it doesn't fit that it would be the leaks as even a secondary cause since the trajectory of the audience has been down all season until last week's episode. There was no hype of a battle scene, so the spike isn't attributable to that either. Which is what began that discussion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
protar Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 There was no hype of a battle scene, so the spike isn't attributable to that either. Which is what began that discussion. I think there was a fair amount of hype. For those following the show they knew a big battle was coming and they would have told their friends about it in many cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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