To no one’s surprise, the overnight ratings show that Empire is still a major hit for Fox: 16 million viewers turned in, earning the second season premiere a Nielsen score of 6.5.
That’s a slight dip from its finale, which earned 17.6 million live viewers and a Nielsen score of 6.9. But it’s still an incredibly impressive turnout for 2015, when the TV landscape is more fragmented than ever and an increasingly lower percentage of viewers bother to tune in live.
As Vulture’s Joe Adalian, one of entertainment media’s most insightful numbers analysts, points out on Twitter, those ratings stack up well even against earlier broadcast hits:
And that’s not even accounting for ratings that include DVR viewings three and seven days post-broadcast. Looks like it’s still the Lyons’ kingdom, and we’re all just living in it.