The ‘House of the Dragon’ season finale has arrived early — and not on HBO’s terms.
HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” a popular drama with more than 2.7 million viewers a week on average, was the most popular TV show in the last week of April. That wasn’t the only big hit; a new comedy starring Adam Sandler, the first show since “The Simpsons” in late May, also led the most recent chart of the week.
The finale of “House of the Dragon” airs on HBO’s online streaming service, HBO Now, on May 4 at 6:30 a.m. ET.
HBO also put out its fourth season premiere on April 30, which was the most successful premiere of the year, according to data provided by Nielsen.
“As you would expect, ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’ was the top-rated series across the week,” said Ken Riedman, HBO’s senior vice president and general manager of digital entertainment. “However, we weren’t too surprised when ‘Game of Thrones’ was the top-rated scripted series — as Game of Thrones has been the number one series for many weeks, and ‘Game of Thrones’ has never been one of the top series on our service. The show is a huge hit across North America, and was even more successful on our service this year.”
The show didn’t have a big hit in the past week, in part because Friday the 13th, the day with the most “Halloween”-sounding titles, has become a bit of a joke in recent years.
However, “Game of Thrones” has enjoyed a year, and it is now being touted as one of the most-watched shows on television. HBO has seen an uptick in subscribers, with the network’s HBO Now service gaining more than 25,000 subscribers a day, making it the only major pay television network that is gaining subscribers.
However, the network has struggled with how to deal with the show’s success; in April, HBO executives said they were going to have to do something with the show’s numbers.
“We decided to create a separate category and give it an umbrella and then just do a deep dive and figure out what the numbers are for it,” said Ken Riedman, HBO’s senior vice president and general manager of digital entertainment