The third season of The Walking Dead, with South Africa just days behind, raked in huge viewership numbers through Fox International Channels (FIC) around the world with it's strategy to make episodes of the show available as soon as possible to viewers.
In America The Walking Dead on the AMC channel is now the number one TV show in all of television (pay-TV as well as free-to-air) in terms of viewers 18-49, the demographic most coveted by advertisers. Within a week of The Walking Dead starting in America, the third season started in 122 countries worldwide across Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa to more than 16,2 million viewers.
In Latin America The Walking Dead is the number one TV show on pay-TV under viewers 18-49, on FX in the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia the show's third debut was also number one on pay-TV. Even in the Phillipines, The Walking Dead broke all previously held performance records for Western general TV entertainment.
In South Africa where pay-TV viewers mostly turned to M-Net the past two decades for high-buzz, brand-new American TV shows, it is now an edgy Fox TV channel on the smaller pay-TV competitor TopTV and which has the exclusive broadcasting rights to the show which viewers have to turn to, to see the zombie drama which has invaded popular culture.
In the show which follows after a zombie apocalypse, a ragtag bunch of human survivors constantly flee in a search for safety, lead by an unwilling police officer Rick Grimes.
"The Walking Dead is without a doubt the biggest global TV hit of the moment," says Hernan Lopez, the president and CEO of Fox International Channels. "Our viewers can't get enough of Dead."
"This incredible global success is the result of a unique partnership and collaboration between FIC, AMC and The Walking Dead's talented team," says Sharon Tal Yguado, FIC's executive vice president of scripted programming and original development.
"For a third consecutive season we are bringing this highly anticipated show to viewers in more than 120 million countries a day after it airs in the United States. We've made a strong committment to the show's hungry and loyal fans and it paid off big time."
"The figures are a great stamp of approval for the quality that we believe our now-universally recognized series has," says Thandi Davids; FIC Africa director of marketing and sales.
Season three of The Walking Dead is already receiving rave reviews with the New York Post stating that the series is the "flat-out scariest, best, most unusual show to ever hit the small screen". Newsday states that season three, "doesn't disappoint". The Houston Chronicle said that "in less than two years, The Walking Dead has jumped into a crowded pop-culture pool of serial killers, vampires and dragons to become a darling of the horror fantasy set."
