‘The Walking Dead’ premiere rises past 22 million viewers with DVR views

“The Walking Dead’s” attack on TV ratings just got bigger.

The AMC drama already had industry folks marveling with its fifth season premiere performance, with a series-record of 17.3 million that made it the night’s top program (even coming out ahead of NBC’s Sunday night NFL game).

Now comes word that the zombie drama has cemented its ratings grip in the first round of its time-shifting reports for the season, which were made available Friday.

The drama rose 29% to 22.37 million viewers when time-shifted viewing over three days is factored in—making it the most watched non-sports telecast in cable history. Zoom out further, and it registered a 10% improvement from the comparable number last season.

And it seems the advertiser-desired 18-49 demo was especially interested in the neck-splitting action. When DVR numbers were factored in, the drama drew 14.5 million viewers, up 32% from the original airing. That gave its demo rating a siginificant boost to a whopping 11.7, outpacing everything this fall, so far, on both cable and broadcast.

And that’s only the first round of time-shifted numbers to consider. Live-plus-seven day figures are still to be tallied.

Twitter: @villarrealy