10 TV Characters Killed In Desperate Attempts To Boost Ratings

Television is unique in the world of entertainment, mainly because it doesn't necessarily set out with an end goal or final date immediately in mind. Whereas a film needs everything condensed in the time it takes someone to devour some popcorn, a TV show can basically go on for as long as a studio wants it to.

Whilst this can obviously have some great benefits for fans who get to binge through hours upon hours of their favourite shows, for a writer it can pose some significant challenges. Keeping interests peaked is the aim of the game with television, and ultimately stands as the thing that will decide whether a show is on air or not after all.

Sadly, it's pretty clear that the more episodes of something are made, the harder it becomes to think of genuinely original and exciting storylines that keep pulling in decent viewership and reception ratings.

One way to overcome this slump in ratings is by throwing in some wild and desperate deaths to some high-profile names. Shows like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad have shown the true power of a shocking TV death, however, it's safe to say that maybe that isn't the case for these other examples of characters being killed just to give the ratings a quick injection.

The Walking Dead is one of those shows that seems to have fallen into that horrible trope of killing off a beloved character every time the ratings threaten to dip a bit too low. Special mentions go to Carl and Rick Grimes for their respective deaths (or "death" in the case of the latter), however Glenn's death at the very start of season seven was where the ratings influence really became the most apparent.

It's probably fair to say that some people were already growing tired of The Walking Dead by the time season six rolled around, with most agreeing that the show had never matched the heights of its debut season. It was still the most valuable show on AMC however, and the channel attempted to drum up the hype for its seventh season with the cliffhanger over which one the main group Negan was going to kill.

The unfortunate recipient was fan favourite Glenn Rhee, one of the few characters to have survived since the debut series. The death was almost unsettlingly bloody, and Glenn's selection was so random that it was pretty clear the show was just trying desperately to keep itself relevant by that point.