Syfy’s “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!” took a great white-sized chomp out of the Nielsen ratings Wednesday night, attracting 2.8 million viewers. The only problem: “Sharknado 2” nabbed 3.9 million.
The third installment of the campy TV movie received a 0.9 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, down 31 percent from 2014’s “Sharknado 2: The Second One.” That said, “Sharknado 3” basically doubled the audience size from the movie that started it all. The first “Sharknado” premiered on July 11, 2013 to nearly 1.4 million total viewers.
Plus, “Sharknado 3” was the top original telecast of the day on cable among total viewers, and was the channel’s most-watched original telecast since its franchise predecessor in both the main demo and in total audience.
The telecast was also a hit on Twitter; click here for some of the best tweets. “Sharknado 3” accounted for a unique audience of 4.5 million Twitter users, 45.2 million impressions and 360,000 tweets from 121,000 unique authors, per Nielsen’s Twitter TV Ratings. Those numbers were down from “Sharknado 2,” but up from the original.
For a quick comparison, the No. 2 non-sports show on Twitter last night — MTV’s “Catfish” — had a unique audience of 718,000, with 2.7 million impressions and 47,000 tweets from 20,000 users.
Last year, The Ian Ziering-Tara Reid Syfy sequel generated 581,000 tweets, seen by 5.5 million Twitter users. The original “Sharknado” earned 318,000 tweets from 112,000 unique users.
For anyone wondering, yes, there will be a fourth “Sharknado” next July, Syfy said.
Fans will be able to vote on the fate of Reid’s character April, deciding if she lives to witness the next storm, or truly died at the end of this one. So hold your breath for that.