“The Walking Dead” faces actual death now.

The AMC show in its 10th season is seeing a quick ratings collapse week to week. Zombies remain as the only loyal viewers.

On Sunday The Walking Dead dropped 25% from its February return to 2.17 million viewers. In February they were low, but at 2.89.

Years ago, The Walking Dead had 13 to 15 million viewers and was so hot you couldn’t touch it. Now, I’m not sure why it’s on TV.

There are just three more episodes left in this season, with another season set for the summer. At this rate, there will be no one left to register their viewing for Nielsen.

This is what happens when a show goes on too long.

Let it go now, AMC.

Queen of a Lot of TV, Shonda Rhimes, is taking the Hollywood Foreign Press to task. She says the people who vote on the Golden Globes ignored her shows until they were hits.

Rhimes reasons: “HFPA rejected our press conference. Until it was a “surprise hit” (Grey’s, Scandal, Murder -SURPRISE!) And yet they STILL asked me to show up in person to present at the Globes. We’re not the only ones. This is why HFPA’s house is on fire.They lit the flame w/their own ignorance.”

She adds: “And I’m the lucky one. More important: think of all the great talent and shows out there that never even got a chance.”

Rhimes’ observation comes on the heels of a published report on TheWrap.com that the HFPA routinely ignored Black movies and TV shows.

The HFPA said last night they would add 13 Black journalists to their group immediately after Hollywood publicists threaten to pull their clients from Golden Globes activities.

The HFPA is really in hot water in ways I never imagined, and I criticized them a lot over the years. But this was bound to happen. Where they’re going to find 13 Black journalists living in L.A. who cover foreign countries is a mystery to me. But I nominate Wilson Morales of BlackFilmandTV. Even though he lives in New York, Morales could cover for any country and is one of the top movie journalists of any color or continent. Just a suggestion.

As for Rhimes, she’s right when she says she’s not alone. So much of TV is ignored by awards groups. I really think once a show has won Best Drama or Comedy that should be it, no more. Actors, writers, directors that’s different. But once the basic gist a show has won, that’s enough. Shows don’t need to win six times.

Here’s a referendum for sociologists to study:

Last night’s episode of “The Bachelor: After the Final Rose” dropped by 400,000 viewers at 10pm when the talk turned from roses to race.

The first two hours of “The Bachelor,” a snore of talk about Matt James choosing between two women, scored 5.7 million viewers.

But then the third hour, in which James had to confront his now estranged winner, Rachael Kirkconnell, fell to 5.3 million. That’s right — 400,000 people checked out when the conversation turned to race, to plantation parties, and world reality.

Host Emmanuel Acho  kept warning viewers that the coming talk in the third hour would be uncomfortable. They took that warning more seriously than if they were about to see sex or violence, and left.

All three hours were beaten soundly by “The Voice” on NBC, with over 7 million viewers. Where did everyone go at 10pm? Either to “Bull” on CBS or to bed. The whole thing is Bull, if you ask me.

America does not want the race conversation mixed in their romantic fantasies. That audience can’t take the truth, thank you very much.

Coming soon: two back to back “Bachelorette” seasons, no Chris Harrison, if ever, until next year.

For all the years “The Bachelor” and its distaff “Bachelorette” have been on TV, race was skirted as if it did not exist.

Then came Matt James, the first Black Bachelor, and all hell broke loose.

Tonight, James’s season ended in tears. James, a good looking guy who had managed maybe never to encounter a life speed bump, was confronted with reality in a harsh way. The woman he chose to give his “final rose” to and perhaps spend the rest of life — Rachael Kirkconnell —  was revealed to be racially clueless and insensitive. She had appeared in photos back in 2018 at a plantation party, an event most of us didn’t know existed.

The rumors of these photos had been all over the internet. But then Rachel Lindsay, the first Black Bachelorette back in 2017, asked “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison about it in an interview on “Extra.” Lindsay elicited from Harrison his own cluelessness as he tried to defend Kirkconnell and said maybe in 2018 such a party would have been alright. Lindsay’s response was deadly as she asked him what role he thought she, Lindsay, might have played at such a party. Harrison’s life must have flashed before his eyes. He was toast.

Meantime, James, the “Bachelor” wrapped and waiting to reunite with Kirkconnell, got the message. He broke up with the girl. She had taken a long time to apologize before the “After the Rose” special tonight, which was hosted not by Harrison but by a Black substitute, Emmanuel Acho, who was just the right person for the job. Even though Acho was another intellectual plane than James, he made his points. Kirkconnell, dressed inappropriately for a cocktail party, came from a place of no education about the world. James, even though weeks have passed for him to process all this, was inarticulate and gobsmacked by reality. His pain was raw. It was something you never ever see on live American television. Sociologists should study this episode.

And so the two are parted for good. Acho suggested a final embrace, which was hilarious. James looked as if he was going to throw up. (It did not happen.) What Kirkconnell got from this is anyone’s guess. James, I think, had a full education distilled in short. This was a tragedy for him, but also maybe an ice bucket of reality that will just make him smarter and wiser. (Earlier in the show we’d met his mom and brother; I wish we’d heard their reactions to all this. They could sense the whole thing was a disaster.)

At the end of the show, Acho introduced two of James’s castoffs as the next Bachelorettes. Did they learn nothing from watching all this? I thought they’d say, “You know what? This is barbaric and we’re not doing it.” But, no, they each think they will “find love.” That they paid no attention to what happened in the last round is itself tragic. But as Phil Donahue always said to me, “One day we will see televised executions.” In fact, Will Forte is supposed to be in a “comedy” soon about a man planning his own suicide.

Don’t we have that already?