It appears that “Empire’s” somewhat excessive season two PR campaign paid off. Fox’s breakout drama drew 16.2 million viewers to its season two premiere, crushed every other program on Wednesday night, and, more importantly to the network, averaged a massive 6.7 rating among adult viewers 19-49, reports Nielsen. That’s up 81 percent from the show’s series premiere last January, and down just slightly from the show’s all-time high.
This marks Fox’s highest-rated season premiere for a scripted show in six years, since “House” in 2009. So how did they do it? From Swizz Beatz to Chris Rock to Marisa Tomei, the celebrity cameos were nonstop. Lucious Lyon’s (Terrence Howard) jail play was a little too real, topped off with an unexpected performance by reality star Miss Lawrence and Cookie’s (Taraji P. Henson) lesbian fling and well … it was almost a bit too much. But apparently just enough to cause a social media uproar.
Fox also had some good news in the 8 p.m. hour. The series premiere of “Rosewood” performed better than expected, drawing in 7.4 million, 2.4 in the demo. The forensic crime drama starring Morris Chestnut managed to self-start and hold its own to tie the return of “Survivor” in the hour — that’s despite the show receiving some of the harshest reviews of the new fall crop, averaging only 37 out of 100 on Metacritic.
Needless to say, this was the kind of boost Fox needed to make its mark this fall. What did you (really) think of “Empire’s” season two premiere? Sound off in the comment section below.
