The Walking Dead’s season five US premiere attracted more than 17 million viewers, breaking the record for most-watched drama in American cable TV history.
Sunday’s season launch drew 17.3 million viewers on AMC, the cable channel that is also home to Mad Men, beating its own previous record of 16.1 million, and even NBC’s Sunday Night Football audience in the key advertiser attractive demographic of 18- to 49-year-olds.
The Walking Dead’s UK TV premiere on Monday night from 9pm attracted an average of 738,000 viewers on Fox – the cable and satellite channel’s biggest ever audience.
In the US, The Walking Dead also broke piracy records, with more than four times the number of illegal downloads than the two previous season premieres, according to Variety magazine.
The episode was downloaded by almost 1.3 million unique IP addresses worldwide in the first 24 hours after its US debut on Sunday, according to piracy tracking firm Excipio.
This compares with 178,000 for the 2013 US premiere and 296,000 for the 2012 premiere. Game of Thrones retains the piracy record, with the fourth season premiere registering 1.86 million downloads in the first 24 hours.
AMC Networks has just renewed The Walking Dead for a sixth season.
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