As Breaking Bad sprinted down the back stretch of its television run at a breakneck pace, one that would wow fans and critics alike, I noticed two interesting scenarios play out on the web and social media.
1- Many non Breaking Bad fans grew curious/thought it would be HILARIOUS to watch one episode out of context to see what all the fuss was about. Often I'd see many of these folks posting a month or so later that they had completed the entire series, failing to dip their toe in the water without falling in, but succeeding in absorbing what will likely be the most lauded one-hour drama of this decade.
2- A lot of articles and conversations debated if Breaking Bad had challenged or perhaps surpassed The Wire in their personal and obviously subjective opinion as the best show ever (Seinfeld and maybe even Hard Knocks IMO are in that convo as well, but they are beasts of a different nature.) Even Family Guy got in on that action, as seen below.
Not one to really pay attention to television ratings outside of sporting events, as per my role at Awful Announcing, I was curious just how large the Breaking Bad Audience grew in its final episodes, as I found the show had commandeered almost all conversation on pop culture at the time. What I discovered blew my mind.
Breaking Bad's initial episode in 2008, garnered an audience of 1.4 million viewers. Heading into the fifth and final season, ratings had jumped from as low as 1.04 million viewers and up to 2.58 million viewers to start season 4, the only time in its first four seasons that the show peaked over two million viewers.
The first half of season 5 saw some positive signs of growth, as all episodes were between 2-3 million viewers. But still as Uproxx lamented, the show wasn't even in the top eight Sunday night cable television programs, despite all of the acclaim and buzz about the show. Let's pause at this moment in time.
It is September 2012 and there are eight episodes left in the series, which will air in a little over one year. Breaking Bad's audience had yet to cross over three million viewers and given the head scratching viewing habits of the American public, it was still relegated outside the top eight Sunday night cable shows behind a bunch of shit for the most part.
And then it happened. Breaking Bad came back in late summer 2013 and the audience had doubled to nearly six million viewers. Less than two months later, when the smoke cleared, Breaking Bad closed out with more than 10 million viewers for its finale. From the end of season 4 to the end of season 5, the Breaking Bad audience had jumped over 570% from 1.9 million to over 10 million. That's absurd and probably a growth rate many still can't wrap their heads around.
So how does this happen over a two-year period, given there was almost no growth from 2008-2011 before the needle moved BIG time?
You have to attribute this explosion in audience to two things.
1- The inescapability of buzz for the show on social media where it's pushed in front of you, and not a radio segment, article or conversation that you opt into.
2- Low hanging fruit to catch up on prior seasons via Netflix, Vudu, and iTunes, as well as re-airings and marathons on AMC and other networks.
Just how inescapable was the chatter for Breaking Bad online?
"Breaking Bad" became a hot topic online on Sunday, as viewers discussed Walt's ending. The fifth season has garnered more than 23 million mentions on Facebook since August, and 3 million people posted about the finale on Sunday, according to data from Facebook.
On Twitter, hashtags such as #GoodbyeBreakingBad became trending topics throughout the day, with 1.24 million tweets generated during the live broadcast of the finale, according to AMC."
If you were online, then the cult of Breaking Bad was certainly going to be making a lot of noise, potentially enough to pique your interest.
As for the streaming/binge watching, the significance of that element to the show's survival, viability and later success was not lost on show creator Vince Gilligan, who credited social media as well.
"I don't think our show would have even lasted beyond season two if it wasn't for streaming video on demand, and also the Internet component of it where folks get to chat. It really has held us in good stead. It's a bold new era in television, and television has changed a lot in six years. I think Netflix kept us on the air. It's a new era and we've been very fortunate to reap the benefits."
In the end, these two factors broke through the inertia of an American viewing public that loves storage lockers, reality shows about blue collar jobs, searching for Big Foot, reenactments of people's cars getting towed, "murder porn," and singing competitions.
This takes me back to The Wire, a show that despite being hailed by a litany of critics and publications as the best show ever, culminated in a final season with an average of under one million viewers in its final season. Many shows that aired before this decade can claim the era in which they aired was probably less ideal than the ecosystem we live in now. No doubt, Seinfeld and The Sopranos among many, many others would have been aided by social media and various streaming outlets.
But no show needed that boost like The Wire, a program that was just way, way, way too easy to make a snap judgment on if you even came across it on your television or in conversation. (Many people still have never really heard about it or know what it is).
The Wire aired from 2002-2008. The ratings were poor, with the show on the cancellation bubble almost every year. For the most part, The Wire aired in an era with no Twitter, some Facebook, no iPhone or iPad, no On Demand or streaming options. Blockbuster or a Netflix DVD in the mail was your best bet to binge-watch on a whim. In fact, when I jumped on The Wire bandwagon, step one was renting season 1 from Blockbuster before buying the subsequent three seasons from Circuit City. Both companies are defunct now and my social network of choice at the time to tout the show, MySpace, is essentially a siloed ghost town now.
There is part of me that feels The Wire still has hope of finding a larger audience. That thought is not rooted in any logic but more optimism that collectively America will remove its head from its ass and realize that arguably the best show on television might be worthy of one's time more than Real Housewives and so on.
I think of what would happen if the show was part of this decade and not the last. Viewers would sing the praises of season 1, get a little on edge with season 2, before becoming cult enthusiasts on par with Cross Fitters as season 3 and season 4 wowed in a way I'm hard pressed to imagine any other show doing ever again.
People would get interested/curious. People would get caught up and enjoy the season 5 swan song. It wouldn't be the eight million+ folks who jumped during Breaking Bad's final season and probably a couple million more in the finale afterglow, but The Wire wouldn't be relegated to what it is now, a somewhat muted inside secret that way too many don't know about and are too skeptical/busy with Bad Girls Club to give a try.
That said, there is some hope.
Anik becomes maybe the fifth person I've hooked into watching, and the first via social media. My hypothetical knockout future wife will hopefully be the sixth. If Anik likes it and shares that opinion, then hopefully others will give it a try. Long flights, recovering from surgeries, unemployment, etc., all offer windows in which there is some possibility for others to retroactively join the party. Still though, a very small silver lining to the fact that The Wire might never have a fraction of the audience it deserves. That said, maybe modern day social media and streaming ecosystems might allow the birth of a show with similar ambitions and thought-provoking subject matter.
