3 entertainment broadcast on cable this year. Simpson: American Crime Story, drew a stunning 7.3 million linear viewers, enough to make it the No. (Remember when pundits were predicting tough times for AMC after the exits of Breaking Bad and Mad Men within the space of less than two years? The network this year was home to four of the 10 biggest dramas among viewers under 50.) Finally, one of the year’s biggest drama hits wasn’t a traditional series: FX’s Ryan Murphy–produced mini-series The People v. With so many big, noisy dramas dominating the culture in 2016, it’s all the more impressive that the comparatively quiet Better Call Saul (AMC), Power (Starz), and Pretty Little Liars (Freeform) also reached the upper echelons of popularity in 2016.

But the network’s spinoff Fear the Walking Dead and newbie Preacher also crack the top 10 drama list, as do HBO’s Game of Thrones and Westworld, FX’s American Horror Story: Roanoke, and History’s Vikings. AMC’s The Walking Dead, of course, towers over everything (on both cable and broadcast), with 2016 episodes averaging a gobsmacking 11.5 million viewers in the key demo (out of a total audience of 18.2 million). It’s not your imagination: Among the ten biggest cable dramas among adults under 50, seven are tinged with elements of sci-fi, fantasy, or historical adventure. Keep reading to see what Dolly Parton and Toni Braxton have in common, which city’s residents really love John Oliver, and what show does surprisingly well with rich people.Īmericans really love their fantastical dramas. So as has become our annual tradition here at Vulture, we took a flying leap down the Nielsen rabbit hole and began exploring the big trends, small quirks, and genuine oddities of American viewing habits during 2016. Still, for the programming airing on traditional linear TV, Nielsen provides plenty of insights about who watched what this year. It sure seems like Netflix’s Stranger Things was one of 2016’s biggest hits, but because the streaming giant (along with rivals Hulu and Amazon) doesn’t disclose viewership stats, it could be that the only people watching the show are pop-culture reporters and Donald Trump’s mythical 400-pound hacker. A good chunk of this content, of course, came via platforms for which accurate ratings aren’t readily available.

But if we might channel Fred Armisen as Joy Behar for a moment: “So what? Who cares?” Viewers still consumed thousands of hours of TV content and hundreds of scripted shows as Peak TV continued to yield something new and interesting to watch almost every week. Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/VultureĪs has been the case for several years now, the operative word to describe TV ratings in 2016 was, simply, decline: Even hits as massive as The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory saw noticeable audience erosion over the past year.

Maya 2016 crack not enough digits