Game of Thrones ratings: “Blood of My Blood” gets lowest numbers of the season
By Dan Selcke
Thus far, the ratings for Game of Thrones Season 6 have been the strongest in the series’ history, and that trend continues in “Blood of My Blood.” However, the latest episode did get the lowest numbers of the year so far—according to Spoiler TV, it nabbed only 6.71 live viewers, marking the first time this season that live viewership dipped below the 7 million mark.
Now, I say that it nabbed “only” 6.71 million live viewers, but really, that’s a number to be envied by any other cable show. Game of Thrones still handily won Sunday night—its closest competition on cable was from HBO’s own Silicon Valley, which benefitted from a Game of Thrones lead-in. Still, live ratings for Season 6 had actually been rising for the last couple of episodes, and it’s too bad that couldn’t go on.
Why did the ratings drop off? Probably for the same reason they drop off around this time every season: Memorial Day Weekend. Game of Thrones elected not to show new episodes on Memorial Day Weekend during Seasons 3 and 4, but usually, it pushed through, and every time it did, ratings fell. In Season 5, they fell precipitously, from 6.24 million live viewers for “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” to only 5.40 million for “The Gift”—the show hadn’t seen those kinds of numbers since Season 3. It makes sense that something similar would happen again—Game of Thrones is great and everything, but so are beach vacations and barbecues and other traditional Memorial Day Weekend activities.
In fact, you have to wonder why HBO didn’t elect to give the show the weekend off after what happened last year. Considering that Game of Thrones episodes regularly pick up more viewers in the week following their initial air dates, the network may not be overly concerned. And also, even though “Blood of My Blood” scored lower numbers than any other episode this year, it still equaled or did better than several episodes from Season 5. When all is said and done, the show is still firmly on track to have its most-watched season to date.