The hit hiphop series "Empire" season 2 returned on Sept. 23, Wednesday, with a solid 6.5 rating on its premiere, while the show also set a new record in Twitter when it earned 1.3 million tweets.
Based on a tweet on the series' official Twitter account, the 1.3 million tweets labelled the series' second season as the most tweeted one-hour scripted broadcast ever. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 296,500 individuals are responsible for more than 1 million of the said tweets which was then viewed by 4.7 million people for a total of 63 million times.
In 2014, the AMC zombie survival series "The Walking Dead" has the most tweeted series premiere with the same record of 1.3 million tweets.
As "Empire" dominated Twitter ratings on Wednesday, Nielsen TV ratings company declared that the hiphop series also garnered a lot of viewers on its premiere. Based on Nielsen's preliminary estimation, "Empire" averaged a 6.5 viewer rating with a total of 16 million viewers which also beats the ratings of almost all of the first season's episodes except the finale.
In March, the ratings company declared that the series' season 1 episode earned 6.9 viewer rating with over 17.62 million viewers.
While the series' overall ratings attest the fact that its audience grows little by little as the episodes went by, the show's premiere made a significant improvement on its second season. According to Variety, "Empire" season 2 improved by 71 percent on its 6.5 viewer rating versus its season 1's 3.8 overall rating.
The said season 1 to season 2 viewer increase was dubbed as the biggest improvement for any scripted series since Fox network's "House" series same record-breaking achievement on television in 2004 and 2005.
For the first episode of "Empire", the Lyon clan members attempt to materialize their plans to acquire power while the Lyon company's CEO Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) is locked up in jail. The most talked about moment of the premiere was when Anika Calhoun (Grace Gealey) began to dance in front of the company's newest financier Mimi Whiteman (Marisa Tomei).
"Empire" season 2 airs on Fox. Show schedules can be viewed through the network's official website.