Do you remember 1992? The top sitcom was Roseanne, the Redskins won the Super Bowl, and it was the last time that a new show rose in the ratings each episode for the first five weeks it aired. Empire, Fox’s Shakespearean-flavoured hip-hop drama, beat that record last Wednesday. The crazy thing is that Nielsen, the company that tracks the ratings, changed their system in 1991, so the record might go back even further.
Empire has bucked the trend of how network television shows usually rate. They are so hyped by the network that everyone tunes in for the premiere. After that, the audience tends to decline before levelling out after a few episodes. That is not the case for Empire, which had 9.9 million viewers for its first episode at the beginning of January. (It also had a higher rating in the coveted 18-to-49 demographic than its lead-in, the former juggernaut American Idol.) The most recent episode, last Wednesday, saw 11.96 million tune in, up from around 11.5 million the week before. To make it even more desirable to Fox, the show averages about 15 million viewers each week once DVR viewership is factored in. That makes it one of the top shows on all of TV.
How did it get there? First, Empire – which has a cast which is almost all black – targeted the African American audience. Black viewers watch live television 42% more than the average American, meaning they watch the ads – which makes them great for networks. Fox reached out to the African American community through targeted screenings of the show before it even launched, turning the premiere into an event. For the first episode, 62% of people under 50 who watched were African American. This season we have seen other shows targeted at audiences of colour, like ABC’s Black-ish and How to Get Away with Murder, also have a great deal of early success.
Black audiences are particularly valuable early adopters because they overwhelmingly use Twitter to discuss television. Last year, Pew research found that 22% of African Americans use Twitter but only 16% of whites. Last week’s episode of Empire inspired more than 366,000 tweets while it aired, more than any other show on broadcast or cable (take that, The Walking Dead!) and more than former champ Scandal.
All of this noise on social media makes more people want to tune in to see what they’re missing. But there is another word-of-mouth advantage that Twitter doesn’t quite explain. That’s just how damn crazy Empire is, which is why everyone is telling their friends to check it out.
Created by The Butler director Lee Daniels and writer Danny Strong, the show tells the story of a dying hip-hop mogul (Terrence Howard) who must leave his music business, Empire Records, to one of his three sons. Making things difficult for him is his ex-wife Cookie (Taraji P Henson), who just got out of jail and shows up to take back her half of the company that she paid for with money she made dealing drugs. The pilot included a scene where Cookie beat one of her sons with a broom.
Like Scandal and other popular soapy dramas, the plot is told at breakneck pace, and the narrative is laced with irony. Both Courtney Love and Naomi Campbell have recurring roles on the show (as a drug-addled former singer and a predatory woman sleeping with a younger man, respectively), and we’re already neck deep in the show’s first murder investigation. Viewers are tuning in to see just how far the show is going to go and exactly what Cookie, the second coming of Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington, will do next.
This is all very big business for Fox, which has already renewed the show for a second season. In my initial review of the show, I pointed out that the music, mostly created by Timbaland, was subpar, but it has drastically improved (Drip Drop is a jam) and subsequently launched some of the singles seen on the show up the iTunes chart, especially R&B sizzler Keep Your Money.
While it looks like the viewers for Empire are starting to level off, Fox certainly has a hit on its hands, one that is even bigger than initially predicted. But with the speed and audacity of the storytelling, the real question is: how long can Empire reign supreme?
