Starz drama “Power” wrapped its second season in strong fashion last Saturday, and has become the 21-year-old premium cable network’s most popular original series on record.
The drama, which stars Omari Hardwick as a New York City nightclub owner who doubles as a drug kingpin to an elite clientele, drew 2.39 million viewers in Nielsen’s “live plus-3” estimates, which includes both same-night viewership (1.54 million) and time-shifted playback done over the next three days (850,000). This was up 51% vs. the show’s first-season finale last year (1.59 million) and broke the network’s “live plus-3” record set the previous week when “Power” averaged 2.29 million.
Prior to this season’s final two episodes of “Power,” the most-watched episode of a Starz original series had been 3.88 million for the wedding episode of “Outlander” last September.
When quickie encores are included in its total, “Power” drew 4.42 million gross viewers over the weekend, also a network record and 42% higher than last year’s finale of the show (3.10 million), according to Nielsen.On average this season, new episode premieres of “Power” drew more than twice as many viewers in Live+3 vs. last year (2.03 million vs. 990,000). And the weekend average for premiere episodes (4.01 million) was up a big 69% vs. last year’s season-one tally (2.38 million).
In multi-platform viewing, “Power” was averaging 6.5 million viewers per episode through eight weeks this season — up 3% vs. the previous record holder (“Spartacus: Gods of the Arena”) and 38% greater than the show’s rookie season (4.7 million multi-platform viewers).
“Power,” which has been renewed for a third season, airs in more than 175 countries/territories worldwide. Starz retains all global distribution and home entertainment rights to the series.
