The Wednesday TV ratings for March 18th are in; here are some of the highlights:
- Though a regular episode of Empire last week wasn't enough to wake up recently sluggish viewership numbers across the board, its two-hour Season One finale at 8 p.m. on Fox sure was. Empire notched a 6.5 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, and 16.7 million viewers. (You can read our postmortem of the episodes here).
- The facts behind those numbers: Empire's finale was the highest-rated first-season finale of any broadcast show since Grey's Anatomy in 2005, and the highest-rated hour for any regularly-scheduled drama series in 6 years (a 2008 episode of CSI was the last to get those kinds of numbers). Empire also nipped at the heels of Sunday's Walking Dead numbers, which we know is the highest-rated series on all of TV right now. Game time, bitches.
- The rest of Wednesday was quiet in comparison, especially since most of the night was dominated by reruns. However, CBS's Survivor at 8 p.m. came in second with a 2.2 rating and 9.53 million viewers, steady with last week's numbers.
- Also at 8 p.m., Arrow on the CW scored a 0.8 and 2.37 million viewers, down 27 percent from its last original episode. I'm going to chalk that up to people not knowing it was back, and that Empire probably snatched a lot of its live audience of those who did.
- The CW's Supernatural at 9 p.m. was down 13 percent on its new night, notching a 0.7 rating and 1.91 million viewers.
- CSI: Cyber at 10 p.m. dropped 18 percent on CBS from last week's numbers, bringing in a 1.4 rating and 7.94 million viewers, almost tying ABC's The Untold Story of the Sound of Music, which also brought in a 1.4 rating and a close 7.32 million viewers.