Game of Thrones climbs to another all-time ratings high in latest Season 4 episode

HBO's Game of Thrones continues to set and break its own ratings records in Season 4, as the show hauled in its most viewers for one episode with Sunday's installment, "First of His Name."

The episode received 7.2 million viewers during its initial airing at 9 p.m. and finished with 8.6 million after the night's encore presentations. This is the fourth straight episode to rise in the ratings and the third series-high in a row. The series is averaging 17.8 million viewers across all platforms through five episodes, a 24 percent increase from Season 3.

Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss seem to have hit their stride with the show. In a recent interview, the two men revealed that they stay away from Internet chatter, be it positive or negative.

"We both made this pact that we were going to stop looking at stuff online because you can go into the rabbit hole and get lost in this world of online Thrones commentary if you're not careful," Benioff told EW.com. "We both felt a lot saner after we stopped doing that. There's many more important things to be reading about online than our own show."

The two did make what they called a "fair exception" for the Red Wedding, but otherwise they stay away almost completely. The two said that this strategy is not in reaction to one particular moment.

"You look at a message board and there might be nine positive comments, but the tenth one is negative - and that's the one you'll remember, that's what sticks in your head," Benioff said. "And you want to have an argument with the person: 'Well, here's why this happened [in the show],' and you can't. You start having an argument in your mind and you realize you're losing your mind. You're having an internal argument with somebody named DragonQueen42 - you're never going to win that argument."

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