Americans Love Empire; the Rest of the World, Not So Much

Fox's hip-hop drama, Empire, is without question one of the most popular series on American television. The only regularly scheduled series that exceeds its ratings performance is The Walking Dead, and this week a faltering TWD didn't attract as many young viewers as Empire, which returned strong from its mid-season break. That success is purely an American thing, though, as attempts to launch the hit series in international markets have so far been disastrous.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Empire has been anything but successful in the UK, Australia, Canada and Germany, where the first season of the series drew small audiences last year and its second season is getting even lower ratings this year. In both Australia and Canada, the series has been booted from its spot on high-profile networks and placed in more obscure spots, on a secondary network in Australia and on a streaming service in Canada.

The lack of interest in Empire is a particular disappointment in the UK, where a bidding war broke out last year among networks that wanted the right to broadcast the huge American hit. Channel 4's E4 network won the war, and for its investment, the network got a series that's drawing an average of fewer than 600,000 viewers per episode this season.

Whether Empire's failure outside the United States has to do with other countries' tolerance of racially diverse drama or whether audiences abroad just don't like the show, it's clear now that the Empire phenomenon is confined to one specific corner of the world.