April 19, 2011

Sky Atlantic's Game of Thrones hits a high point

It looks like Sky Atlantic finally has a big hit on its hands. The new HBO series Game of Thrones pulled an impressive average of 743,000 viewers its debut on Monday evening and that is likely to be over 1m when timeshifted viewing on Sky+ is included.
Much more impressive that the other channel debuts Treme and Boardwalk Empire. I wonder if the fact that it was broadcast less than 24 hours after US broadcasting made a difference to those numbers? Copies were available on the main Torrent sites pretty quickly but Sky's policy of broadcasting ASAP may be paying off to some degree after all. Game of Thrones is unlikely to appear on disc or legit download this year btw ... or Virgin Media come to that.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully now vm will attempt to obtain this channel

Erich said...

It's the first really marketable show with wide appeal for Sky Atlantic, so as I predicted some time ago, it was going to do significantly better than their other shows.

sibod said...

Debuts are always higher, it's the staying power that is more important.

Witness The Event or Flash Forwards demise.

AJ said...

I am a law abiding person and would prefer to watch this series legitimately. If virgin cannot show it then I will try to get it on DVD. If that option is also denied me then I will download it with a clear concience. If nobody is willing to take my money for it then I am not harming anybody by watching it for free.

Erich said...

sibod sayz...
Debuts are always higher, it's the staying power that is more important. Witness The Event or Flash Forwards demise.


Those were crap, of course, which was evident from the beginning. Other shows like 24, Lost, Friends, Big Bang Theory, and many others, grew in popularity. I haven't seen Game of Thrones, so I couldn't really comment on its potential in that regard. The point is, it's the first show Sky Atlantic has had on its hands that it could really do much with over here. However, if quality wise it's another Flashback/The Event, then that's not going to last long.