Fox's Breakout Hit Empire Pulls An Unlikely Audience

Last fall, while CBS, NBC, and ABC were trumpeting year-over-year gains for their slate of shows, Fox was dying. Only one of its new programs—Gotham—had gained any traction, and total viewership was down 30 percent from 2013. Most executives didn’t expect much from the Jan. 7 premiere of Empire, a musical drama about a dying rap mogul who pits his three sons against each other to see who will inherit his enterprise. “We knew that … it would be a challenge for it not to be seen as just a hip-hop show or just a soap opera,” says Joe Earley, chief operating officer of Fox’s TV Group.

Now Empire has become the network’s biggest hit in years. Ten million people watched the premiere, and that’s grown to 14 million per episode in two months. As of March 4, it’s the only TV show that’s increased its audience nine episodes in a row, at least since Nielsen began tracking in 1991. It’s also the most-played show on Comcast’s on-demand portal. In early March, Steve Levitan—creator of Modern Family, TV’s last megahit—jokingly asked Fox to stop playing its show on the same night as his.