Better Call Saul’s finale was ratings bonanza for AMC
Your honor, if it pleases the court, AMC’s client was a ratings dynamo
Aux News Saul
With the end of Better Call Saul, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould can stop terrorizing Albuquerque with their overt propaganda for lawlessness and depravity. But at the end of the day, Saul never incited the same passionate, loud, and obnoxious fandom as Breaking Bad, so maybe there’s less to worry about. It didn’t penetrate the Internet of the early 2010s with stupid memes of a guy in a porkpie hat declaring that he was the one who knocks. It didn’t incite sexist fan campaigns that the show’s creator still feels bad about. In short, there probably won’t be a statue of the infamous ambulance in front of the courthouse.
For all the motormouthed arguments made by Bob Odenkirk over the years, Saul never cracked the mainstream in the same way as its predecessor. What could? At the time of its finale, Breaking Bad was fending off overblown think-pieces declaring it the greatest television show ever made. Breaking Bad’s silly little spin-off about the show’s huckster lawyer could never live up to those expectations, even as it quietly came close exceeding them.
Nevertheless, the show’s ratings were all good, man.
According to AMC, the finale of Better Call Saul was the most-watched episode of the season, with more than 1.8 million viewers tuning in to see Jimmy McGill’s masterful final hour on the air. It was the most viewers the show received since the season three finale, positing the theory that, perhaps, Michael McKean was the show’s Pied Piper, blowing his flute and leading fans to AMC. Better Call Saul also ranked third in overall ratings in cable shows for adults, behind Yellowstone and Walking Dead.
The show also did well on streaming, where it “has been the #1 acquisition driver in the history of AMC+,” writes AMC publicity. Of course, AMC+’s history spans generations, eons even, having launched a whole two years ago. Most importantly, though, more than four times as many viewers watched the finale on AMC+ the day it aired than watched the season premiere in the spring. The network also acknowledges that, while Saul is very popular, it failed to catch up to The Walking Dead, a show that, like its titular characters, will never die.
All-in-all, this is good news for anyone that thinks of AMC as one of the last bastions of good television for adults on basic cable. If AMC or FX pull an HBO, we’ll be SOL.
26 Comments
Can’t believe it was two years ago already at the start of Covid when we were asking when this final season would ever see the light of day.It ended at the right time, but I’ll miss it.
Not to mention the whole “star coming close to dropping dead of a heart attack while half the season was still unfilmed” thing.
Hard to believe we had *13* straight years of the best (imo) storytelling on TV.
FAKE NEWSRuPaul’s Drag Race has only been on for 13 years.
We didn’t though? Breaking Bad ended in 2013 and Better Call Saul didn’t start airing until 2015.
Was a shorter break between seasons than Better Call Saul S5 and S6 (obviously due to COVID-19 but the break between S4 and S5 was equivalent to break between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul too).
In short, there probably won’t be a statue of the infamous ambulance in front of the courthouse.
What exactly is “the infamous ambulance”? When Gene fainted a few seasons ago?
even as it quietly came close exceeding them
The word “to” has been omitted here.
It was the most viewers the show received since the season three finale, positing the theory that, perhaps, Michael McKean was the show’s Pied Piper, blowing his flute and leading fans to AMC. “positing”?
So now does AMC have the resources to finish Lodge 49?
The journey and the people you share it with was the treasure
It’ll be a spinoff completely about Blaise and the Captain.
Also I saw Sonya Cassidy in real life last week at a bar (and it wasn’t a Shamrox’s!)
with more than 1.8 million viewers tuning in to see Jimmy McGill’s masterful final hour on the air.1.8 million viewers really doesn’t seem like that much.I get there’s also streaming, but how much does AMC make off 1.8 million viewers?
It’s a lot for the sort of show Better Call Saul is, an extremely non-crowd pleasing affair.It’s getting more viewers than any of the shambling corpses of the Walking Dead franchise.
It isn’t, which the article points out. The finale was the most watched episode of the season with 1.8M. Season 11 of TWD is averaging about the same.People love to talk about the declining ratings of TWD and talk about how nobody watches it, but it still does better than almost every other scripted basic cable drama. Maybe it shouldn’t, but CBS shouldn’t be able to survive off 17 seasons and 9 spinoffs of the same cop procedural either.
I stand by my decision to stop watching scripted TV years ago. I’m never going to be saying at the end of my life that I wished I’d watched more TV.
This guy here
Wtf you even doing here then?
Or you’ll be kicking yourself for not watching the Mr. Rogers where he shows how to self-administer the Heimlich. And that it doesn’t involve kicking yourself.
Thanks for stopping by to let everyone know what you’re not doing.
You missed the word franchise.There’s Fear, which about 3/4s of a million watch, Beyond which was less than half a million by the end, and now this Tales thing which is half a million.And even the main show hasn’t pulled in 1.8m for a while.
I mean dude. 10 million people used to watch TWD every week. Comparing that to BCS, a smart drama that never panders, is silly. BCS is the most searched show on IMDB currently ahead of the House of the Dragon. It did as well and better than they could have ever hoped, not that I care, it’s a masterpiece.
Well, for one, a far, far more expensive show like Westworld only averages 300K viewers. Yes, HBO is a subscription service, but they do have 48 million subscribers. AMC is in roughly twice that many households in the U.S.
Breaking Bad’s silly little spin-off about the show’s huckster lawyer could never live up to those expectations, even as it quietly came close exceeding them.Can’t disagree more here. Speaking as someone who came late to Breaking Bad and got to binge it all at once and loved it, I am firmly of the belief that Better Call Saul was in every regard a much better show. BCS was a masterpiece.
BCS was the far more consistent of the two shows (Seasons 1-2 of BB are very shaky, Saul has no shaky seasons). But the peaks of BB IMHO were higher.
The first 3 – 4 seasons maybe
It was absolutely an amazing show. The fact that they took what was essentially the comic relief of one show and then built a show around him pretty impressive. They kept the feel of BB but really did a good job of making their own show. Also the character of Kim Wexler was perfect. If anything BCS hinged on the relationship between the two of them. The biggest questions was always, what happens to Kim?