Zombie Dead cream the Stews, ratings for AMC series raise the dead

By April MacIntyre Oct 18, 2011, 5:32 GMT

Among adults 18-49, AMC said, "The Walking Dead" was a basic-cable record-setter. On the night, it outrated every show on broadcast TV, except for Sunday Night Football.

Zombies trumped the Pan Am stewardesses in ratings, as AMC released the numbers, astounding figures showing the cabler series nabbed 11 million total views for the night, and 7.3 million viewers in the first showing of the season premiere.

AMC's drama that features the award winning handiwork of producer Greg Nicotero's makeup design and Robert Kirkman's post-apocalyptic tale of a band of Americans navigating the Georgia countryside killed in their second-season opener, which averaged a whopping 7.3 million viewers.

Now led by three alpha males, Jon Bernthal (Shane) Andrew Lincoln (Rick) and Norman Reedus (Daryl) - the group of women, children and an older man (Dale) looking for answers to a catastrophic illness that makes the dead live as zombies - have met up with a family on a farm, after Rick's son is shot accidentally by one of the farmer's kin. 

Among adults 18-49, AMC said, "The Walking Dead" was a basic-cable record-setter. On the night, it outrated every show on broadcast TV, except for Sunday Night Football.

"Pan Am" was Sunday's lowest-rated broadcast scripted series.