"Breaking Bad" Breaks Records - East Idaho News
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“Breaking Bad” Breaks Records

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AMC 10113 breakingbad?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1380619187359Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC(NEW YORK) — Sunday’s 75-minute series finale of Breaking Bad, the AMC meth drama, shattered records with an impressive 10.3 million viewers tuning in, the network announced on Monday.

That’s up from last week’s 6.6 million viewers and the fourth record audience mark set during the final eight episodes.

When Breaking Bad premiered back in 2008, only about 1.4 million people watched.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show only cracked the two million mark once during its first four seasons.  The final installment of the companion series, Talking Bad, set its own record, averaging 4.4 million viewers.

In comparision, The Sopranos finale on HBO drew almost 12 million, and The Walking Dead ended last season with more than 12 million viewers, making it the most-watched AMC original broadcast to date.

The Breaking Bad finale also set another record.  According to TorrentFreak.com, Internet users all over the world downloaded more than 500,000 illegal copies of the finale within 12 hours of the first pirated copy showing up.  The website says that makes the finale the most-pirated episode of Breaking Bad on record. 

TorrentFreak says most downloaders were in Australia, followed by the United States and the UK.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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