TV Thursday: Scream Queens Encore Falls Flat, Delayed Viewing Skyrockets

After a disappointing debut for Scream Queens on Tuesday, Fox took another shot at gaining an audience for the series by airing an encore broadcast of the first episode on Thursday. Tuesday night's airing drew only 4 million total viewers, but the Thursday night showing did even worse, pulling in only 2 million total viewers.

Those numbers don't tell the whole story, though, and the series' performance shows how tricky it can be to predict how shows that target young audiences will fare overall. When you take into account delayed streaming of the episode on platforms such as Hulu, the series added another million viewers in the three days after its official broadcast premiere. That seems to bolster the idea that young viewers, who were active in talking about Scream Queens on social media before, during and after the premiere, watch TV in untraditional and difficult-to-predict ways.

On the other hand, even if you count the Tuesday, Thursday and streaming audiences as unique viewers, the show's total viewership still falls short of that of The Muppets, which won the night on Tuesday with 8.9 million total viewers, and that doesn't include the 2 million streaming viewers that the series added in the following three days. Scream Queens may not be the surprising flop that it appeared to be on Monday, but at this point, it's a stretch to call it a hit.