The Sopranos dethroned

Game of Thrones becomes HBO’s most popular series.

Game of Thrones, HBO’s Emmy-award winning fantasy epic, has surpassed The Sopranos as its most popular series ever, the premium cable network said on Thursday.

Episodes in the fourth season of the show have an average gross audience of 18.4 million, including repeat showings, video on demand and mobile streaming, which broke the record of 18.2 million set by the 2002 season of the mobster drama, The Sopranos, reported Reuters.

Video on demand and delayed viewing habits have changed significantly since 2002, with more options being open to television audiences.

Season three of the show averaged 14.4 million viewers per episode. Two episodes of the fourth season have yet to be aired, with the finale set for June 15. HBO has already committed to making seasons five and six.

The series on Time Warner Inc-owned HBO network features dragons and castles. It is based on the best-selling books by fantasy and science fiction writer George RR Martin about fictional, medieval families fighting for control of a mythical land.

The show, which first aired in 2011, stars Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Emilia Clarke and Maisie Williams. It is sold to more than 200 markets outside the United States.

However, what needs to be noted here is that the audience has a lot more ways of watching HBO than ever before and HBO has more subscribers now than it did in 2002. The overall TV universe is bigger and more diverse now, so Game of Thrones has multiple advantages over The Sopranos, suggested Hitfix.com.

Despite Game of Thrones having its share of advantages, it’s not like The Sopranos didn’t have any. Before 2004, Nielsen (a leading global information and measurement company that provides market research, insights and data about what people watch and what people buy) measured all of the channels within HBO’s universe as a single entity. So if The Sopranos aired on a Sunday night, the ratings you’d get would also include HBO2, HBO3, HBOCZECH, basically anything with an ‘HBO’ in it. So if seven million people were watching The Sopranos and 200,000 people were watching House 2: The Second Story, Nielsen would round it up to 7.2 million viewers for HBO’s ratings.

That being said, let’s face it, Game of Thrones has officially whacked The Sopranos off its ratings perch.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2014.

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