In the five years it has been on the air, The Walking Dead has broken all sorts of television-watching records—and its spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead, hit an all-time cable premiere high in August. While the zombie-filled drama was the most tweeted-about series in 2015, it wasn’t able to scare up a large enough audience to become the most watched show of the year. That honor, according to Nielsen’s year-end number-crunchers, belongs to the brains over at The Big Bang Theory. Here are the most watched television series of 2015 (football games not included).
1. THE BIG BANG THEORY
Average Number of Viewers:
21,065,000
It’s only appropriate that CBS’s hit series about a bunch of geniuses would manage to devise a way to hold on to the top spot for a second year in a row.
CBS continues its reign atop the Nielsen ratings with NCIS. Though the series is in the midst of its 13th season, viewers don’t seem to be tiring of Mark Harmon or his crime-solving skills.
3. THE WALKING DEAD
Average Number of Viewers:
19,669,000
In addition to being the most tweeted about show of the year, the graphic novel-turned-graphic zombie show is the only cable series to make it into Nielsen’s final tally of most-watched series.
