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'Game of Thrones' finale draws staggering 19.3 million viewers

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By Robyn Beck

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having never seen an episode of either, I cannot say.

You don't have to watch it and you don't have to like it. But you have to make sure that Japan Today readers know you don't watch it? Ok right.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

if GOT fans would like to continue watching gratuitous violence

Doesn’t watch the show but judges the violence gratuitous. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Age of Outrage™

5 ( +5 / -0 )

"Staggering", is it? The last episode of a show called "Cheers" pulled in somewhere between 80-93 MILLION viewers in America alone. No severed heads and I doubt even the hint of a nipple much less porn quality Greek style wrestling, and massively more popular for all of the GOTmania the media assures me has possessed my fellows. I

That is comparing apples and oranges. Cheers was broadcast on NBC, which was accessible for free on basically every TV set across America. GoT on the other hand is available on HBO which is only available to those who specifically pay for it, a much smaller pool of viewers.

Also, the Cheers finale was broadcast in 1993, before the internet and the massive fragmentation of viewing audiences that ensued. Similar network TV shows don't get anywhere near that much viewership now. Coincidentally the most popular recent sitcom on network TV, Big Bang Theory, also had its series finale this month after 12 years. It drew 18.5 million, less than the GoT finale despite, like Cheers, being the top sitcom on TV and available for free on every TV in America.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

maybe it isn't THAT popular.

Oh dear.

"Sunday's season eight premiere of "Game of Thrones" was the show's most-watched episode ever, but it could have been even bigger if more people watched it legally.

The episode, "Winterfell," kicked off the final season of HBO's epic fantasy drama, and it was pirated 54 million times globally in 24 hours, according to Muso, a digital-piracy analytics company."

That's only the first episode of season eight, which was watched by 17.4m people on HBO in the US alone.

"The season seven premiere was pirated 90 million times in 72 hours, according to Muso, and the season seven finale was pirated 120 million times in 72 hours."

https://www.businessinsider.com/game-of-thrones-premiere-pirated-54-million-times-in-24-hours-2019-4

These numbers are astonishing and way beyond anything that's ever been seen before.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Traditional television, with 20 minutes of too-often repeated commercials per hour, will die a well-deserved death. Good riddance.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

They should've stretched it out more because season 8 did seem really rushed with the sudden end of the Night King and the Dragon Queen's spiral into insanity.

I don't see how the end of the night king was sudden - the war was built up to for 7.5 seasons, and given an entire 1.5 hour episode (a standard movie length), with a previously provided explanation of how his death would result in the death of the armies.

And while the Dragon Queen's descent into madness came quick at the end, the build up to it was always there. A second watch will show lots of foreshadowing to this end, people just got caught up in hope of her being a powerful awesome benevolent ruler, subsconsciously giving her a pass for her bad behaviors.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow." Jon Snow really did make a lot of poor decisions throughout GOT but at heart was always a good man, like Ned Stark, perhaps too good.

I think that's it. He was a Ned Stark child through and through, which did little better for him than it did for Ned.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

All good points, Stranger. I guess I'm more of a fan of the books than the show. It was all way too fast for me.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Hmmm....  The hysteria around viewing fugures and the like seems overdone.  I seem tp remember plenty other shows getting way more viewers than the numbers being hyped above.

As for the ending, was a bit cheesy but think that was also a function of the hype and expectation.  Not sure how else they could have wrapped it up.  did show that once the George RR Martin words ran out Dave and DB were found wanting as writers.

alsoot sure that the "prequel" will be of much interest now we already know what what is going to happen.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

They should've stretched it out more because season 8 did seem really rushed with the sudden end of the Night King and the Dragon Queen's spiral into insanity.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow." Jon Snow really did make a lot of poor decisions throughout GOT but at heart was always a good man, like Ned Stark, perhaps too good.

Now if GRRM would just finish the damn books, which are much better than the TV series.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Honestly I don't even now how they correlate that viewer data now as say the photo above

there is at least 15 people watching one TV do they account for viewing parties and other modern age situation like piracy? Number is probably near Cheers the way it seems every media outlet, podcast, website, athlete, and social media influencer has mentioned it.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It was rush, they should have stretched it out a bit. But at least it ended on a reasonably consistent note, and the people we liked who survived mostly did well. Actually I don't see how Jon even got out of King's Landing alive after what he did, but I'm glad he did - even if it was more a favor to fans.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

All good points, Stranger. I guess I'm more of a fan of the books than the show. It was all way too fast for me.

Books or comics are usually better than the films, there’s more detail that you can interject and go more into detail, not to mention that your own imagination will come into play to enhance the characters in your mind giving you more pleasure. Movie adaptations have limits and that is time, each episode as in GoT runs about an hour and to squeeze all the elements from the book into an hour show just isn’t there.

They could go the Lost route and make it 12-15 or 24-25 episodes, but I think with shows like “Lost” although it was a great show, the budget was going through the roof, not to mention the actors were getting tired and needed a break. When you work in the film industry, filming is not a 9 to 5 job. Shooting times can be random according to what you are going to film, the scene, the location, the hours can be a 3 to 17 hours, not to mention the tons of work, reshoots, editing, post predictions, actors wanting and need breaks. Having worked so long in the TV industry, it’s fun, but unless you are a Will Smith on the other hand working as a crew hand or in the production department it’s hard work and overly demanding and many networks just don’t want to stretch episodes that long anymore, before they did, but 10-12 is pretty much the standard. I personally would love to watch more episodes in the season, but I really understand why the networks don’t want to do it.

Also do you have to factor in the special effects, the CGI just for the dragons alone and for this show is just mind blowing and to get that kind of realism and depth You were going to shell out a lot of money and that is not cheap, every little detail of that Dragon uses close to the same painstakingly process of using animators to get it all so amazingly real and lastly, downloading episodes does cut into the shows profits and to a point limits their budgets. I know and I get why people can’t be patient I want to download, but will you do it does hurt HBO.

HBO is already in the works for a new show and have eight different ones from the books that they can work on, so I’m kind of excited to see what will come next. Personally, overall I was satisfied with the ending, I think they did whatever they could, but you will always have people that will complain about the ending of any show, take your pick. Lost, True Blood, The Sopranos, Friends etc. The list goes on and on and all of the shows so many people were complaining about how they ended and I think deep inside people just don’t want the shows to end, I personally want GoT to continue, but everything in time comes to an end, because in reality there is really no good way of ending any good show and that everyone will be satisfied.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Traditional television, with 20 minutes of too-often repeated commercials per hour, will die a well-deserved death. Good riddance.

HBO is a premium pay-channel and thus require no commercial ads

And that's also why it won't match other shows finale that's available on more TV households like Cheers or Seinfeld

People like the idea of viewing parties for this because not everybody wants to be a paying subscriber

but can't touch MAS"H*

Nothing will ever come close to MAS*H - back then, most people generally had only 7 channels, no cable, no internet, no piracy, no 1,000 other shows to watch instead (there's no way to recreate that environment unless ya move to North Korea)

Anything popular is one that can capture the society's zeitgeist of the moment - a modern barometer is social media, like when Game of Thrones was the Top 17 trending on Twitter

0 ( +0 / -0 )

No interest in this show whatsoever and maybe 19 million is a lot for HBO but can't touch MAS"H* and a few others so maybe it isn't THAT popular.

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

"Staggering", is it? The last episode of a show called "Cheers" pulled in somewhere between 80-93 MILLION viewers in America alone. No severed heads and I doubt even the hint of a nipple much less porn quality Greek style wrestling, and massively more popular for all of the GOTmania the media assures me has possessed my fellows. I suspect it's more interesting and informative reading of others experiences with the show and seeing the little clips than actually watching the production oneself albeit, having never seen an episode of either, I cannot say. But, if GOT fans would like to continue watching gratuitous violence, there is always the news watching the fish in the barrel, Gaza, be firebombed yet again.

-8 ( +1 / -9 )

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