As you may expect, the series finale, “The Iron Throne”, has become the most-watched series finale for any program in Sky, the United Kingdom’s subscription broadcaster for Game of Thrones. But there is a twist! Another episode was the most watched overall…
As originally reported by The Hollywood Reporter, at 5.789 million cumulative viewers, the Game of Thrones series finale, “The Iron Throne” broke the finale record once established by the previous finale, season seven’s “The Dragon and the Wolf,” which stood at 5.170 million. For the sake of comparison, the (somewhat) equivalent figure in the United States, which accounts for overnight and streaming viewers, was 19.3 million.
And yet, unlike in the States, “The Iron Throne” was only the most-watched finale in the United Kingdom; not the most-watched episode in all Sky programs or this season: surprisingly, that would be “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” the calm-before-the-storm second episode in this final season, which enjoyed a viewership of 6.31 million.
In the United States, by contrast, this quiet yet beloved second episode was the least watched Game of Thrones episode this year, at 10.29 million, behind not only all of season eight episode but also season seven’s “Eastwatch” (which came after the explosive cliffhanger in “A Spoils of War”) and the finale, “The Dragon and the Wolf.”
On average, each season eight episode had a cumulative audience of 6.081 million, which is said to be “the biggest-ever series performance of any Sky program”, and “up 28 percent from the previous record of season 7, which sat at 4.76 million.” Another interesting fact is the demographic breakdown of the audience by reported gender, which was an almost equal 51-to-49 percent male/female split.
SKY has been hitting them out of the park recently. SKY was co-producer on Chernobyl… if Chernobyl has been shown in the UK I have not seen numbers for it yet. That show seems to have keep some GoT viewers from canceling their HBO hooks.
Man that second episode, I felt something in almost every scene. Great work by Bryan Cogman, his second episode in S7 also was by far the best episode. A Broken Man in S6 is one of my favorites of the series. Wonder why D & D didn’t let him write 2 episodes, or give him one of the key late season episodes to get him a shot at an Emmy. ::sigh::
It beats me how they arrive at these viewing figures? I’ve been a Sky subscriber for years albeit I don’t live in the UK… I left in 1986. I’m lucky I can receive the satellite at all being so far south (in the Canary Islands).
I don’t believe a Sky Digibox can upload info via the satellite as to what channel is being watched so how do they calculate these viewing figures?
In the UK, many Sky subscribers connect their digiboxes via the internet to Sky to get extra services, but I can’t for obvious reasons as I don’t live there! If they saw my IP address, it would be a ‘give away’ that here was someone from overseas and could block my viewing card via the satellite.
Its all bloody ridiculous IMO as I read once there are ~300K British ex-pats who live outside of the UK in Europe who subscribe to Sky. I’m sure they wouldn’t like to lose the income! Me being one of them 🙂
Black Raven,
TV ratings in the UK are calculated by BARB, the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board. They commission Ipsos Mori to survey a few thousand people each week about what they’ve watched, and based on those statistics calculate the viewing figures for everything.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms aired on Easter Monday here, that might have contributed to its viewership as people had all day at home to watch it at their leisure.
LatrineDiggerBrian,
Stormborn was actually one of my least favorite episodes of the entire series. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was loads better, but I still prefer D&D episodes. The only Cogman episode I would consider amazing would be The Laws of Gods and Men. I felt Cogman’s episode was more comedic than dramatic, and I’ve always preferred drama to comedy. There were three scenes that made me emotional in Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, those being Brienne’s knighting, Podrick’s song, and Sansa and Theon’s reunion. Compare that to The Last of the Starks that had Jon’s funeral speech, Sansa pinning the Direwolf pin to Theon, Gendry proposing to Arya, Danerys begging Jon to keep quiet about his parentage, Arya telling Jon he has always been their brother, Jaime and Brienne’s night together, Jaime and Brienne’s farewell, Jon bidding farewell to Tormund and Sam, Rhaegal’s death, Tyrion and Varys’s conversation, Tyrion pleading Cersei to surrender, and Missandei’s death. I feel D&D simply have a better grasp on the story, as they should, being the showrunners.
As for the Emmys, Cogman’s episode could still be nominated.
LatrineDiggerBrian,
First of all you’re just claiming your personal opinion as a fact and second of all, with all due respect to Bryan he’s lucky he even got an episode considering there were only 6 episodes, he was a coffee boy as he himself admitted before D and D gave him a chance in the writing staff of the show THEY created and i’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate your comment(and this is not your only comment doing this btw) constantly denigrating his bosses even on articles that has nothing to do with it despite your so called “praise” for him ! He even quit twitter because of crap like this years ago which sucks because he was the only one from the inside who we used to get behind the scenes info and even some motivations behind some of the writing decisions, but of course The Dragon Demands’s of the interwebs had to ruin that .
Young Dragon,
Not only that but even GRRM said that even on the episodes that they not write, D and D always add something of their own in it or cut something from it so all the episodes that their haters praise that they hilariously think they have little to nothing to do with it are actually more their episodes than they think, look at the original script that Martin wrote for Blackwater and the one that ended up on screen an you will see what i’m talking about, but hey anything to add a little more shit towards them like they didn’t have enough of it already, it’s already canon in these people’s minds that D and D ruined the show even though the show wouldn’t have existed or reached the popularity it did if not for them . A show being successful it’s not copy and pasting source material without having no talent at all, otherwise other GRRM properties being adapted like the Nightflyers would have been a success but we all know that didn’t happen .
Oh hells yeah, that episode (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) deserves to be the record holder. It was the best season 8 episode by quite a margin for me.
Jack Nabble,
D&D are very good in rewriting and enhancing stories who are written by other people. I am the same, I cannot write very well myself but I’m good at editing. That’s a necessary talent too.
Chilli,
Other than GoT, David Benioff has 2 great novels, so he can write really well.
LatrineDiggerBrian,
I am with you that Cogman does excellent work.
D&D are responsible for the excrement that made up most of Season 8.
For me as a viewer, of the ones I saw, the majority of these scenes you have here for D&D were really bad. I was mostly annoyed/bored.
LatrineDiggerBrian,
Cogman himself said that his script felt like a Wikipedia page and D&D fixed it.
mau,
Weird, they didn’t put as much effort into their own episodes or Dave Hill’s then. I do agree that D & D are great writers, but they just didn’t bring it in the final seasons sadly.
Don’t get why you guys are jumping all over me, my post was really more meant to compliment Bryan than to bring down D & D. After 8 seasons, I thought Bryan should’ve gotten an enhanced role in the final season, at least letting him write episode 3 or 5. It’s beyond me why they’d give an episode to Dave Hill instead of a second one to Bryan.
Mango,
That’s your opinion though, opinion doesn’t equal fact no matter how much you think it does, but it’s pointless talking to someone who is basically putting his fingers in his ears and going on with the same regurgitated stuff, and how would you know that D and D were responsible for most of the “excrement” in the season, were you there in the writer’s room by any chance ? I can also claim a bunch of outlandish stuff and cherry pick stuff that i don’t like, that doesn’t mean it’s true, but then again you don’t know the difference and you can’t really expect much intelligence from someone with the username Mango
Curious as to when we’ll get the box sets announced and if it’s going to be something special
LatrineDiggerBrian,
I didn’t mean to jump on you. I was just offering my opinion on the matter.
Mango,
To each their own.
Wolf in the Fold,
Thanks for the info. I went to the BARB website which explains how its done.
Young Dragon,
No worries, I didn’t really mean you. I just saw the volume of posts defending D & D and was surprised.
I live in the UK and when you consider the relatively small size of the population, the fact GOT aired at 2am, with a uk rerun at 9pm Monday and that a lot of people have cancelled Sky subscriptions in recent years due to cost and competition the numbers are extremely good.
Sky are pushing Chernobyl hard using the fact it has a higher IMDb rating than GOT/Breaking Bad. It’s a great six part documentary but no comparable in my view.
Another great show is Gomorra from Sky Italy, about the mafia and a gritty version of the Sopranos.
We did the same when we lived in Switzerland, you could always tell the English expats as they have a big dish to get Sky abroad.
Don’t you think this goes for most countries?
Jon Snowed,
Very true! I use a 1.2m dish, but receive about only half of the Sky channels. Just those on the Euro wide beam which fortunately includes a spot beam to cover the Canary Islands.
I don’t get a sniff of the UK narrow beam and even in mainland Spain, one would need a 2.5m dish to receive the BBC, ITV, CH4, etc which are ‘free to air’ and don’t need a Sky subscription. I pay ~£25 a month for the standard family package plus the HD channels.
Its all a bit risky as I can lose (and have lost) channels when new Astra satellites are launched and sometimes channels which I could once receive get moved across to the UK narrow beam.
One of the penalties one has to live with being a British ex-pat 😉
Since we didn’t have an Emmy submission thread I’ll just stick this here:
https://www.emmys.com/ballots/2019
It’s the ballots lists for nominations. (One note for those that always bring him up, Alfie is on the supporting actor ballot.)
Alfie deserved an emmy for previous seasons (4, 5, and 6, IMO), but I don’t think he has a chance to win for season 8. He really didn’t have much to do.
P.S.
I would also like to start a thread with a blank caption next to Brienne in the pic above and see what people would have Brienne saying.
For me, I think she has to be looking through the White Book incredulously wondering how in the hell that book managed to survive the burning of King’s Landing.
Clob,
It’s interesting that they only submitted the finale for best writing.
I’m surprised A Knight of the Sevens Kingdoms didn’t make it, that was exceptionally well written.