Ahead of final season, Empire has already secured a place in TV history

Empire will premiere its final season this fall, cementing a legacy born from smart marketing and indebted to a hungry audience.

The 2019 TV season marks the beginning of the end for Empire, a modernized King Lear tale that chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Lyons music mogul family. It is a show that has always been steeped, both on and off camera, as much in controversy as monumental success. As fans prepare for a no-doubt dramatic finish after five seasons on the air, a look at how Empire‘s success as a ratings juggernaut first came about shows not only FOX’s savvy marketing but a TV landscape sorely lacking in diversity.

It is apropos that the story of the Lyon family was called Empire because that’s exactly what FOX set out to build when they dedicated themselves to pushing that series to the forefront of their network. It may pale in comparison to the work of Romulus and Remus, but Empire, like Rome, was not built in a day. FOX took meticulous time and effort to reach its audience.

As statistics show, that audience from the start was always comprised of young women and most of all, “urban markets,” which is the kind of coded language often referring to people of color, who made up a large fraction of Empire’s viewership. Variety reported in 2015 that 67 percent of Empire’s audience was African-American and 10 percent was Hispanic.

It seems obvious to say that one reason for the show’s success with black audiences was its mostly black cast. But it is a little bit more complex than that. It isn’t just that black audiences naturally gravitate towards characters who look like them. It’s that a black family arrived on their screens at a time when it wasn’t the norm to see such a thing on cable television.

Which almost seems odd to say given that cable television was once filled with shows starring mostly black casts. The Cosby Show was America’s first incredibly successful black-led television series. For five seasons straight, it was the number one television show on the Nielsen ratings (one of the only sitcoms to do so) with its remaining three seasons remaining in the top 20. By the time that the series ended in 1992, that success encouraged other cable networks to take a chance on telling black stories.

As a result, black-led shows like Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Martin, Living Single, The Wayans Bros. and Moesha not only made it to air but were among the most popular television series of the ’90s. Even well into the early 2000s, black voices dominated the small screen with shows like One on One, Girlfriends, My Wife and Kids, and The Bernie Mac Show being extremely successful and maintaining a long life span on television.

Then, television networks started to lose interest in telling black narratives. Perhaps it coincides with the dissolving of the UPN Network, which broadcast a long list of black television shows, including the aforementioned One on One, Girlfriends and Moesha, to other hits like Everybody Hates Chris and The Parkers. Eventually, the prominent onscreen black presence dwindled on cable television; what was once a relatively common thing became a rarity.

However, that interest seemed to be renewed closer to the mid-2010s, when Scandal premiered in 2012 and became a smash hit for ABC. Blackish and How to Get Away with Murder hit cable television during the fall of 2014. And although it airs on a premium network station (Starz) rather than basic cable television, it’s worth noting that Power premiered in 2014 as well. Then, of course, Empire arrived on FOX the following January, finding the largest amount of success that any black television show has had in years.

In the months building to Empire’s series premiere, it was clear that FOX was all-in on promoting the show and pulling in key audiences. The network was determined to pull in women audiences and young audiences, both by targeting POC demographics. Empire’s name and image were plastered all across billboards, boxing event sponsorships, and even check out screens at Walmart and Target during Black Friday. Commercials and trailers aired on Bravo in the middle of Real Housewives shows and of Love and Hip Hop on VH1. Adverts for Empire aired all across the radio, specifically on “urban” stations like Power 105.1. Over 40 influencer screenings were established by firms like Liquid Soul, the same firm that pushed just as hard to promote eventual Best Picture Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave upon its release.

FOX made sure that Empire would be visible for men and women within the black community who were most likely to find its image appealing. As Deadline explains in their own report documenting Empire’s marketing, the show targeted “women who like soaps … with promos featuring fun, lighter music while younger viewers were aimed at with promos built on heavier hip-hop sound.”

In the end, all of this high profile marketing paid off with Empire becoming the highest-rated new television series of the 2014-15 TV season by the time its second episode aired. On top of that, the first season ended by racking in a whopping 17.33 million viewers.

It appears that what convinced audiences to check out Empire was the amount of publicity that the show received for having a majority black cast. To not only get that visibility with Empire and get that on such a profoundly large level in terms of a public presence felt like a breath of fresh air.

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People of color have always been hungry to see their stories told on screen. Because it was at one time such a rarity, we have always wanted to see stories told for us, by us. The struggle for people of color to gain access to and, more importantly, opportunity in television spaces has long affected the visibility of POC on screen, but with Empire, Lee Daniels decided to use his influence to lead the way.

Daniels using his platform to tell stories about a powerful black family in the entertainment industry practically felt unheard of at the time and it was long overdue. That is why so many POCs within both the young and female demographic arrived in droves to see it.

Of course, interest in the series waned as the series progressed with each season. In season 2, that initial 17.33 rating fell to a respectable 15.94. Then, 15.94 million turned into 10.37, which turned into 7.45 and then ended its latest fifth season with 6.28 million viewers. However, ratings still remained higher than the average show on television and people of color continued to dominate those ratings.

Did black viewers remain loyal to Empire for five years to support a black-led show? Or was it just because they spent so much time with the show by its decline that they were too invested to walk away? It’s hard to say. What cannot be disputed, however, is the unwavering success.

Now, this fall, the Lyons will take their final bow, with a secure place in TV history as an Empire built on smart marketing and a devoted audience.

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Empire returns for a final season 6 on Sept. 24.