In the two-year-old-could-have-predicted-it category comes the “breaking news” today that Fear the Walking Dead has been renewed for a third season. That was pretty much a given before the show even had its second season bow on Sunday, and its continued ratings success was never much in doubt. Its numbers are definitely down year over year, but then so is pretty much every show on television (including parent series The Walking Dead). FTWD had a 3.1 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic for its Season 2 premiere which was down from its S1 finale but which topped everything on cable for the week except one of the NCAA Championship games. That ratings score was also better than anything on the broadcast networks last week except FOX’s Empire and it tied The Big Bang Theory. Expect Fear the Walking Dead‘s numbers to slip through its second season because that is the typical trend, but also expect it to continue do dominate among cable shows and beat out most of what is airing on the broadcast nets as well. Short of an unlikely ratings collapse, I would say that this show probably has at least five seasons in it because AMC will want to stretch it out to get it enough episodes for a syndication run (the parent series is already playing strong in that market). Season 2 of FTWD will run for fifteen episodes (with a mid-season break) and I expect future seasons will be around that count as well.
Expect more renewal / cancellation announcements over the coming weeks as we approach the May Upfronts where the networks present their schedules for the 2016-17 season (you can see the timing of those at this link). And keep a close eye on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for updates and breaking announcements.
Now this is a series renewal that is wholly undeserved.
“Fear The Walking Dead” in my opinion is dreadfully awful. The characters are unsympathetic, they continually do some unbelievable stupid things and more than once, I have hoped that the zombies would simply “win”.