Game of Thrones ratings down slightly for “Home,” still great

The Sunday cable ratings are in, and as expected, Game of Thrones dominated the night. “Home,” the second episode of the sixth season, pulled in 7.29 million viewers, and scored a rating of 3.7 among adults 18-49. Its closest competition came from AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, which pulled 4.8 million viewers and a rating of 2.1.

“Home” didn’t nab quite as many viewers as “The Red Woman,” the Season 6 premiere—that episode pulled in 7.94 million people. That made it the third-highest rated episode in the show’s history, behind only “The Wars to Come” and “Mother’s Mercy.” “Home” is the fourth highest-rated episode in the show’s history, so there’s hardly cause for alarm. Ratings always drop off a bit following a season premiere, and the drop-off between “The Red Woman” and “Home” (7.94 million viewers to 7.29 million) was much smaller than the one between the fifth season premiere and the episode that followed it (8 million viewers to 6.81 million).

To put it another way, “Home” had more live viewers than every episode in Season 4, and all but two in Season 5. The show did well, is what we’re saying.

Are the high ratings the result of people tuning in to find out what happens to Jon Snow? If that’s the case, we can expect continued high ratings for this Sunday’s “Oathbreaker,” when we’ll see what happens to the character now that he’s back from the dead.

h/t Zap2It