'Empire’ Premiere Grows to 22.5M Viewers

The second-season premiere of Fox’s “Empire” packed on two full demo ratings points and moved above the 20-million mark in total viewers, according to Nielsen’s “live-plus 3” estimates, which include three days’ worth of DVR playback and VOD during the same window, reports Variety.

And according to Fox, the 3-day audience total of “Empire” rises to 22.5 million once streaming viewership on Hulu and Fox.com are included.

In same-day numbers last week, “Empire” opened to near series-highs (6.7/21 in 18-49, 16.18 million viewers overall), coming in just shy of the 18-49 rating it did for its final episode last March (6.9). It rose to an 8.8 in the demo and 20.76 million total viewers in Live+3 — the second best scores in the shows 13 episodes to date.

The 8.7 rating, by far the highest for any entertainment series during premiere week, is a tick below the 8.8 achieved for the show’s first-season finale last March but above the night’s two-hour average (8.4). And the 20.76 million, which is a little over 1 million below last year’s 21.92 million for the finale, makes “Empire” the third most-watched show overall during the opening week of the TV season, behind CBS veterans “The Big Bang Theory” (22.49 million) and “NCIS” (21.47 million).