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Despite technical difficulties experienced by some people trying to watch Fire TV Sticks, HBO announced that the first episode of House of the Dragon recorded the network’s biggest premiere.
The first season of Game of Thrones finished its run in 2019, with 13.7 million people watching the finale live on linear networks. When the statistics for streaming and video-on-demand were added, the total number of viewers for the series was over 19 million.
According to HBO, interest in the original series spiked in the days leading up to the premiere of Dragon. The entire series is now available for streaming in 4K on HBO Max, resulting in a weekly average increase in streaming for the month of August that is 90 percent higher than in July.
It would appear that an answer has been found to the question of whether or not viewers were still interested in the series following the conclusion of the previous show’s final season and because a growing number of people have shifted their viewing preferences to favour streaming services over cable television in the past two years.
According to a statement released by HBO’s chief programming officer Casey Bloys, “It was amazing to see millions of Game of Thrones fans return with us to Westeros last night.” The cast and crew of House of the Dragon are brilliant individuals who put their whole selves into the production, and we are pleased with the fantastic reception that the show has received from its audience.
Although it is difficult to compare the statistics, they are noteworthy for HBO and HBO Max and come after a few weeks of confusing decisions made by its new corporate owners Warner Bros. Discovery.
Recently, executives decided to remove hundreds of episodes of Sesame Street from HBO Max, pull several shows from streaming services, including some much-loved animated series, and put a movie about Batgirl that was supposed to air on HBO Max into the vault.
This will be Amazon’s high-priced epic. In addition to this, it will be going up against the competition in the swords-and-sorcery subgenre on September 2, when the debut of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will take place on Amazon Prime Video.
The first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings television series will premiere on a Thursday night at 9 o’clock Eastern Time (ET), followed by the publication of one episode per week at midnight Eastern Time (ET) on Friday mornings, up to the release of the last episode on October 14. Every Sunday night at 9 o’clock Eastern Time, new episodes of the show House of the Dragon will be available until the first season concludes on October 23.
