'Empire' Smaller but Still Sprawling as TV Premiere Week Continues
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The third night of premiere week ratings were all over the map, as broadcast’s biggest scripted series returned to a much smaller audience than its year-ago opener, while a trio of heavily-promoted newcomers put up solid, if unspectacular numbers.
According to Nielsen fast national data, Fox’s “Empire” kicked off its third cycle with an average draw of 10.8 million viewers and a 4.1 rating in the adults 18-to-49 demo, and while that was flat compared to its May 18 season finale, it also marked a steep 39% drop versus last fall’s premiere, which delivered a staggering 16.2 million viewers and a 6.7 in the demo.
If it appears that “Empire” has lost a lot of its earlier heat, it’s worth noting that the show historically has managed to recapture millions of lost commercial views in the all-important C3 and C7 metrics against which all ratings guarantees are made. (C3 approximates commercial viewing over a program’s first three days of viewing, and C7 does the equivalent for seven days.) Last season, “Empire” added an industry-leading 1.2 ratings points upon conversion from live-same-day to C3, improving from an initial 4.4 average for all 18 episodes to a 5.6 in the currency. To put those gains in context, the average gain for scripted broadcast series in 2016-17 was 0.2 ratings points.
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