Spring Season 4 Update:
SPRING PREMIERE OF EMPIRE SEASON 4
This top-rated FOX TV series has seen a significant decline in viewing figures over the latest release period. The second part of Season 4 has just started and everyone is waiting for the first TV show audience ratings since Empire’s renewal is still questionable.
The spring premiere of Empire "Birds in the Cage" reached the second highest audience rating this season with 6.217 million viewers and a 1.8 rating among the 18–49 demographic, which is an increase compared to its fall finale, plus this made it the top-rated show of the night. The fall finale had a viewing figure of 5.9 million and the fall premiere had 7.0 million according to Live + Same Day Ratings. However, the TV show audience for the following Episode 11, which aired one week later on April 4, 2018 "Without Apology," had already dropped again by 10.4% and could also only reach 1.8 in the key demo rating*.
As seen in our last analysis of the TV show audience of "Empire," P2P user numbers show the same declining trendline as conventional audience measurement data. Even though they naturally come in lower than these viewing figures predict, they still serve as a good indicator of certain content’s normal popularity. However, piracy data allows for a more detailed analysis of the viewing figures (for e.g., development of catch-ups with earlier episodes). First signs of a turn-around can therefore be revealed earlier. Let us take a look at how the TV show audience of Empire has developed according to P2P piracy numbers over the last few weeks.
For a better comparison with the above-mentioned ratings, let us start with an update of Empire's P2P piracy numbers in the U.S.:
HOW MANY P2P USERS DOWNLOADED AT LEAST ONE EPISODE OF EMPIRE PER DAY IN THE U.S.?
Source: TECXIPIO P2P Insights Creator (PIC), Screenshot of TV show report of Empire. Development of daily number of file sharers in the U.S. since first torrents of Empire hit P2P networks.
FIRST SIGNS OF RENEWED INTEREST IN THE U.S.
The long-term development shows a clearly declining interest in the TV show among P2P users. Episodes of the first season and the first part of the second season showed peaks of more than 40,000 file sharers who downloaded episodes of Empire the day after new episodes were released, whereas the following seasons attracted nowhere near this number. The fall premiere of Season 4 only attracted 14.4 thousand file sharers the following day and all other episodes performed on a similar lower level. In total, 445,491 P2P users in the U.S. downloaded episodes of Empire during the release of the first part of Season 4 vs. 873,151 during the first part of Season 3. As mentioned before, the piracy activity’s trendline was in line with the development of conventional TV show viewing figures. Furthermore, the piracy numbers of the spring premiere showed the higher interest of the TV show audience in Empire compared to the last episode in December. In contrast to the Live + Same Day Ratings, it also managed to outperform the fall premiere. In addition, Episode 11, which was released on April 4, 2018, was downloaded by a slightly higher number of P2P users.
It is surely too early to predict a turn-around since the spring season has just started with two episodes, but the TV show piracy numbers might show the first signs of renewed interest in Empire in the U.S. Stay tuned over the following weeks to read more about the Empire viewing figures.
Next, we had a look at worldwide piracy data to find out, if the viewing figures develop accordingly in markets all over the globe.
HOW MANY P2P USERS DOWNLOADED AT LEAST ONE EPISODE OF EMPIRE PER DAY WORLDWIDE?
Source: TECXIPIO P2P Insights Creator (PIC), Screenshot of TV show report of Empire. Development of daily number of file sharers in the U.S. since first torrents of Empire hit P2P networks.
WORLDWIDE TV SHOW PIRACY NUMBERS FOR EMPIRE FURTHER DECLINING.
The interest in episodes of Empire has decreased strongly from Season 1 to the latest episode of Season 4. The number of P2P users downloading Empire peaked at almost 250,000 per day after new releases during Season 2, while some fall episodes of Season 4 barely exceeded the 100,000 mark. While the fall finale performed fairly well in this context as the top episode with a peak of over 105,000 file sharers, the spring premiere was awaited by only 83,000. Nevertheless, the TV show piracy numbers for Empire went up again to 92,000 file sharers the day after Episode 11 was released.
IS THE TRENDLINE OF THE U.S. AN EXCEPTION?
We answered this question by taking a closer look at the top 10 countries with the highest number of P2P users who had downloaded episodes of Empire since the fall premiere of Season 4. Only in two other countries—Brazil and the United Kingdom—had the TV show piracy of the spring premiere increased compared to the fall episodes.
Fall Season 4 Update:
December 10, 2017
‘EMPIRE’ FACES 40% DECLINE: TV SHOW AUDIENCE DATA POINTS TO DOWNSIZED INTEREST
The mid-season finale of FOX’s “Empire”, “Slave to Memory”, just aired on December 13, 2017. In order to get a more comprehensive look at the TV show audience of “Empire”, we gathered up all of the data from P2P monitoring around the world and lined it up against the latest Nielsen TV ratings.
According to Nielsen TV ratings, “Empire” hasn’t been performing too well with TV show audiences in the United States. Nevertheless, the mid-season finale managed to increase its audience by 8.56% from episode 7 to 8, and by 5.56% from episode 8 to 9. In total, the TV show audience of the first half of Season 4 of “Empire” averaged 1.93 million viewers in the key demographic of ages 18-49, and 5.85 million viewers in total. However, compared with the average from the first half of the previous season, the TV show audience went down by nearly 40% in the 18-49 demographic, and by 32% in total viewers.
P2P TV SHOW AUDIENCE NUMBERS FOR ‘EMPIRE’ ALSO DROP
Since the first episode of “Empire” aired on January 7, 2015, the number of daily file sharers reached around 61.8 million by December 20, 2017 – nearly one week after the first half of season 4 ended. Although the last episodes saw a slight uptick in file sharing activity, the sum of daily file sharers within the release window of Season 4’s first half dropped by nearly 40% as compared with Season 3’s. This development in P2P numbers directly mirrors the TV show audience decline. To demonstrate this, the following numbers represent the sum of daily P2P users who downloaded and shared episodes of “Empire” during the first halves of seasons 3 and 4 – to consider how airings shift worldwide, the time periods have been expanded by two days:
• Season 3 Part 1 release window: 9/21/2016-12/16/2016: 7.76 million • Season 4 Part 1 release window: 9/27/2017-12/15/2017: 4.59 million
Unsurprisingly, the sum of viewers for each year saw a decline as well, including an 18% drop in 2017 to date as compared with 2016.
• 2015: 23.24 million • 2016: 21.11 million • 2017 to date: 17.33 million
Altogether, most signs point toward a negative development in the “Empire” TV show audience. Nonetheless, the small uptick from the last episodes of Season 4 may have positive impacts on viewer activity in the second half. We’re curious to see what data this brings back to us when “Empire” returns in early 2018. But one question remains: Will the TV show be renewed for a fifth season after all? For now, FOX are keeping their cards close to their chest.
In the meantime, check out the full article below and discover facts around the TV show audience of "Empire"!
TV SHOW AUDIENCE’s INTEREST FOR ‘EMPIRE’ SUFFERS FURTHER LOSSES DURING SEASON 4
November 8, 2017
Since the pilot episode of "Empire" has aired, more than 17.6 million P2P users had sought the series by November 8, 2017. Given that P2P users may share on more than one day, this number adds up to 59.5 million.
According to our update on October 5, the interest of TV show’s audience dropped – in TV ratings as well as in TV show piracy. The downward trend among U.S. TV viewers has been continuing: with an average drop of 25% during Season 4, "Empire" is finally landing at 1.84 million among the 18 to 49 demographic for the fourth episode on October 18.*
Nonetheless, file sharing statistics drew a slight uptick for overall episodes of the music drama: from 91,200 P2P users to 104,400 on the day after the fourth episode “Bleeding War”, was released. But, when breaking down the numbers for P2P users who sought new episodes only on the days of their respective release, the downward trend reflect TV rating trends overall: from 66,400 file sharers for the premiere episode to 60,000 for Episode 4.
If you are curious about how the story around “Empire” will continue to unfold, follow us on LinkedIn to stay tuned. We’re going to keep you updated with new file sharing and audience insights for Season 4.
33% LESS P2P USERS AMONG TV SHOW AUDIENCE FOLLOWING THE SEASON 4 PREMIERE IN COMPARISON TO LAST SEASON
October 5, 2017
When we last looked at numbers for this TV show (see article below), we noticed declining piracy numbers, which led us to believe that Season 4 would also be off to a relatively slow start. Last Wednesday, September 27, “Empire” aired its first episode of Season 4 on Fox. According to ratings, the TV show audience comprised 6.9 million total viewers, a significantly smaller crowd than the Season 3 premiere (10.9 million)**. In Nielsen’s “Live plus-3” ratings, the TV show managed to gain another almost 2 million viewers*** (vs. 3.4 million last year)****.
Of course, P2P numbers come in lower than TV ratings predict, but they still serve as a good indicator of how popular certain content is. And also with Season 4, piracy numbers for the TV show, reflect the same trend we see in TV ratings.
After the Season 3 premiere, the number of P2P users downloading files of “Empire” peaked at 110,200 the following day. The first episode of Season 4 attracted 91,200 file sharers – which is 17.2% less than the previous season premiere. An even clearer picture emerges when we look at the five days following the release dates, since many file sharers download episodes a few days down the road as well. Season 3 was released on September 21, 2016. In the following five days, a total of 322,546 P2P users downloaded episodes of “Empire” while only 216,171 P2P users stuck around for the Season 4 release – a 33% drop.
EMPIRE SEASON 1-3:
TV SHOW AUDIENCE'S INTEREST DECLINING ACCORDING TO PIRACY DATA
September 21, 2017
“Empire” is a music-drama TV show about Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), the CEO and founder of a successful record label, who has just been diagnosed with ALS. The family drama in the world of hip-hop begins to unfold as he tries to choose one of his three sons to be his successor, while his ex-wife and co-founder is also trying to reclaim a place in the company after being released from prison.
The first season of “Empire” on the FOX network reached TV show audiences on January 7, 2015. After only the first two episodes, FOX announced in a press release that it had ordered a second season. With every subsequent episode during the rest of the first season, this seemingly premature decision was vindicated: steadily expanding TV show audiences and record-setting ratings continued up to the 12th episode in March 2015. The TV show’s success was also evident in the several award nominations it received, including being named among the TOP 10 Television Programs of the Year and Golden Globe for Taraji P. Henson in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series-Drama.
As the second and third seasons unfolded, TV ratings started to slowly decline, but “Empire” is still holding on to its rein, earning several No. 1 spots in different categories, especially among the 18 to 49-year-olds in the TV show audience. But are those first few drops in ratings an indicator that interest among the TV show audience is starting crumble? Now that Forest Whitaker is joining the cast for the TV show’s fourth season, will the family drama revisit the success of its early days and recruit more numbers to the TV show audience again?
Before the first new episode of “Empire” airs on September 27, 2017, we wanted to scroll through the file sharing statistics to find out more about the TV show’s popularity, trend line and its audience in different target markets.
ALMOST 17 MILLION FANS HAVE DOWNLOADED AND SHARED ‘EMPIRE’ EPISODES OVER P2P NETWORKS IN THE TV SHOW’S LIFETIME
One day after the first episode aired on January 7, 2015, torrent files of the TV show started to trickle into P2P networks. The TV show audience peaked at 62,800 file sharers for Episode 1 on January 9, 2015. Since then, every time a new episode has been released, file sharing activity spiked the following day. But that doesn’t mean the lines went silent during season breaks. Even then, the TV show audience watching “Empire” couldn’t get enough and was busy catching up with older episodes. The daily number of file sharers tended to range between 30,000 and 40,000 in times between release windows. In total, 16,898,887 P2P users worldwide have downloaded and shared files of the music industry drama since torrents of the first episode were released in P2P networks. Because P2P users might share several files a day and do so on multiple days, the daily average might also paint a better picture of the file sharing activity. Throughout the entire 968 days since the TV show launched (including release windows and season breaks), a daily average of 58,145 users had downloaded and shared “Empire” episodes.
SHRINKING TV SHOW AUDIENCE AFTER ALL-TIME HIGH DURING FIRST PART OF SEASON 2
The highest number of daily file sharers was recorded during the release window of the first part of Season 2. One day after Episode 5 was released on October 22, 2015, a total of 239,300 P2P users downloaded and shared files of “Empire”. No date since has even come close to touching this all-time P2P high for the TV show. The next-biggest surge came one day after Season 2 finale, when numbers reached 176,900 – not exactly a packed house for the second-best performance. The peaks in TV show audience during Season 3 couldn’t match even those levels. When the first episode was released after the mid-season break, P2P user numbers on the following day huddled below six digits, at almost 98,000, as did the other Season 3 peak for Episode 17.
Looking at the numbers in more detail, there is another indicator of a TV show’s popularity among certain audiences that illustrates this one’s declining trend. Instead of just analyzing the trend line for all episodes of “Empire”, we can also find out how many were watching the latest episode that was just released, as well as individual episodes per season.
To crack this code, we compared the highest and lowest peaks that occurred during each release window to look at changes in TV show audiences anticipating new episodes. In addition, the number of P2P users who have started catching up on the show with former episodes can be an indicator of whether or not the story line is able to attract new fans over the course of the show. But even the number of newly addicted TV show audiences has been decreasing. ‘EMPIRE’ HASN’T MADE TOP 25 TV SERIES WORLDWIDE SINCE 2015
The worldwide half-year charts depicting the most popular TV series among P2P users don’t yet have an entry for “Empire” in the top 25. As a comparison, “Empire” closed out the first half of 2017 with a total of 3,279,240 file sharers. “The Walking Dead”, which also released new episodes within this time period, took the first spot with a TV show audience of 30 million P2P users. Even the TV show ranked at the bottom of that list reached an audience double of what “Empire” brought to the table: Spot 25 was downloaded and shared by over 7 million P2P users.
TV SHOW AUDIENCE PREFERENCES DIFFER AMONG KEY MARKETS: 1.5 MILLION U.S. FANS VS. 1.5 MILLION DISAPPOINTED P2P USERS IN CHINA AND LATE BEGINNERS IN FRANCE
The two countries with the highest number of P2P users for “Empire” episodes have produced about 1.5 million file sharers each since the first episode was released. But the trend lines for the United States and China draw two very disparate pictures. The TV show audience in the United States kicks into gear on P2P networks when new episodes are released – a reaction typical for all TV shows. The trend line for China, on the other hand, shows a rather unusual flattening trend during the time that Season 3 was airing. On top of that, the average number of daily file sharers has clearly remained at a lower level in China (see chart). So how can the total number of P2P users be similar? Fans of “Empire” in the United States download and share files over a spread of several days within the time period that episodes are being aired so that they can stay up-to-date with the newest developments. In China, however, it seems that while there were many P2P users overall who downloaded the show, they soon lost interest, realizing the show wasn’t for them, and didn’t demand new files to keep up with the story down the road.
Another trend line was drawn for 10 countries ranked by the number of P2P users active in “Empire” files. In these countries, interest in the music drama developed in a manner quite similar to the United States: In Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Spain and India, the TV show audience in P2P networks has been continuously decreasing since the beginning of Season 2.
With one notable exception: France, which has ranked fifth in the list of top countries since the beginning of 2015 with a total of 724,175 P2P users. When “Empire” kicked off Season 1, only a few file sharers had started looking for episodes. And its audience didn’t change much until the beginning of Season 3, when the daily number of P2P users started to almost quadruple. In addition, we had a look at the number of days that users downloaded “Empire”. Especially during the release window of Season 3, the average number of days was significantly higher in France than in other countries. Was “Empire” really able to attract some new loyal fans in Europe? We’ll just have to wait and see what happens once Season 4 hits the screen.
Get more facts about the file sharing and piracy landscape in different countries. For example, find out what's trending among file sharers in the United States, Russia or the P2P file sharing networks in China.
LARGEST TV SHOW AUDIENCES PIRATING FILES OF ‘EMPIRE’ FOUND IN JOHANNESBURG, CAPE TOWN, RIYADH AND LONDON
Even though South Africa claimed the sixth spot in the country ranking with 723,543 P2P users since 2015, two of its cities have the highest number of “Empire” file sharers in the worldwide city ranking. The No. 1 city is Johannesburg with 198,900, followed by Cape Town with a TV show audience of 188,400 P2P users. This also means that more than half of all P2P users who pirate episodes of “Empire” in South Africa do so in these two cities. The third and fourth spots are taken by Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh, (155,000) and London (147,900).
VIVO, A BRAZILIAN ISP, BOASTS THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF P2P USERS WHO SHARE ‘EMPIRE’
Since the beginning of 2015, certain ISPs were used to share “Empire” files in each country. The providers that most of the TV show’s audience used to enter P2P networks where they downloaded files were Vivo in Brazil, Telstra Internet in Australia and Telkom Internet in South Africa.
Download infograhic about the piracy statistics of 'Empire'.
The analysis of P2P user numbers for “Empire” suggests that TV show audience figures will continue to drop for Season 4. But maybe with additional stars joining the cast and good storytelling, “Empire” will be able to turn the negative trend lines upward again.
If you are curious about how the story around “Empire” will continue to unfold, stay tuned, we’re going to keep you updated with new file sharing and audience insights for Season 4.
Source: TECXIPIO PIC Definition: The file sharing data is based on number of unique file sharers: How many peers (file sharers) shared at least one file of 'Empire' within a certain time period?
Further sources:
* https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/empire-season-four-ratings/ ** http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/empire-season-4-premiere-star-season-2-premiere-ratings-1202575281/ *** http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/dvr-ratings/this-is-us-and-the-big-bang-theory-premieres-get-even-bigger-in-early-dvr-ratings/ **** http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/tv-ratings-this-is-us-bull-l3-gains-1201869997/