by J. Brown
A month and a half after its premiere episode, Empire has skyrocketed into the biggest new drama on TV that isn’t produced by Shonda Rhimes. According to this report by Entertainment Weekly, Empire’s ratings have increased every week and are reaching Walking Dead numbers. I don’t know how TV ratings are calculated, but I always measure ratings based on how annoying people on Twitter and Facebook become when the show is airing. Based on these systems, the numbers seem to match. This is all pretty unprecedented, and every report that I’ve read suggests that there weren’t any lofty expectations for the program. To me, it seemed very much like a cheap attempt to attract Black viewers. “Let’s give them hacky hip-hop music and put Terrence Howard in it. He’s in all the Negro films, they must love that guy.” Surprisingly (or maybe not), this has worked out probably better than even FOX had imagined. How did they pull this off?
