This last weekend AMC’s smash hit ‘The Walking Dead’ has returned for a forth season and has once again shattered it’s previous opening numbers. The first episode back entitled ’30 Days Without an Accident‘ has brought an absolutely amazing 16.1 million viewers to the first episode with a 8.2 rating among adults 18-49. To put that into perspective on how high they’ve raised from last year, the Season 3 opening had 12.4 million viewers. That’s up by nearly 4 million!

Compared with other shows, ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘ opened with 11.9 viewers with a 4.6 rating and the series finales for ‘Breaking Bad’ closed with 10.3 million viewers and ‘Dexter‘ with 2.8 million viewers. Zombies are just tearing through the competition on viewing numbers and ‘The Walking Dead’ is running towards one higher set of ratings after another.

If ‘World War Z‘ didn’t prove it at the box office with it’s high grossing sales, then clearly ‘The Walking Dead’ is proving it on television – zombies are still in. It’s no wonder with numbers and ratings like this that AMC has a ‘The Walking Dead’ spin-off show in the works. It’ll be interesting to see if it will be related to characters we’ve seen so far, characters from the comics, characters in a future crossover, or will just be within the same world.

This season the struggle is going to once again be off of the zombies and see the group run into a new enemy that was featured at the end of the last Sunday’s Season 4 premiere episode. Also, on top of the standard end of the world scenario, we’re going to supposedly see some comedic relief from Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. as new comer Bob Stookey. Let’s face it if you can’t laugh at the end of the world what can you laugh at, right?

From the big opening numbers, it is no doubt that ‘The Walking Dead’ will again be this season’s highest rated show in both cable and network television viewing.

‘The Walking Dead’ starring Andrew Lincoln, Steven Yeun, Norman Reedus, Chandler Riggs, Lauren Cohan, Scott Wilson, Melissa McBride, Chad Coleman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Emily Kinney, Larry Gilliard Jr., David Morrissey, and Danai Gurira and airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on AMC.

Source: Blastr