The final moments for Breaking Bad's leading character, Walter White captivated audiences and set a new ratings record for the show, although not the network.
The last Breaking Bad episode ran for 75 minutes and averaged 10.3 million viewers, based on Nielsen's first estimates. This number was a whopping increase compared to the episode the week before, which had a reported 6.6 million viewers. Nielsen also reported that most viewers fell into the 18-49 box, the age range preferred by advertisers. Breaking Bad's last episode proved to be the most watched finale of basic cable, beating out the Soprano's finale and Sex and The City's too.
The spike in audience numbers suggest that many caught up with the series thru Netflix or DVDs. Last season's finale only brought in 2.8 million views.
On the Twitter front, Breaking Bad's finale set some new records too. It got about 1.24 million tweets, and on Facebook, it was reported that 3 million users interacted 5.5 million times about the last episode.
Despite all the impressive numbers, the finale did not break any of the network's records. The Walking Dead, the network's zombie drama held strong to their 12.4 million same-day viewers at the season finale last March.
AMC Network president Charlie Collier gave credit to Breaking Bad's creator Vince Gilligan, and mentioned that Vince only asked for a single thing, and that was "to end the show on his own terms". He went on to say that Gilligan ended the show brilliantly, and said that the network would always be proud to be the birthplace of the iconic show.
In other networks, Homeland debuted its first episode of the season with 1.9 million viewers. Masters of Sex premiered with a 1 million viewership.
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