EXCLUSIVE: The power was certainly on for the Season 5 premiere of Power but it was surging on a much smaller screen than before.
Laying track to the future in the present, the July 1 airing of the Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson starring Starz drama snagged 1.55 million viewers and a 0.6 rating among adults 18-49. Thats steady in total sets of eyeballs with a dip of just 8% from the Season 4 opener of June 25 last year. Tied with baseball on ESPN for the top key demo spot of last Sunday, the Jackson, Omari Hardwick, Naturi Naughton, Lela Loren and Joseph Sikora led NYC tale took a 25% hit among the 18-49s from its 2017 debut.
Overall and all Power plays, viewership for Starz on July 1 was up 5% from the Season 4 premiere to 2.8 million. However, steady or down, those numbers might actually not be that big a deal to the Lionsgate-owned premium cabler this time round.
Power EP Kemp predicted last year that in 2018 the shows “linear numbers will no longer be relevant” – and looks like she may be right on the money, or at least the button.
In a true script flipper, the Starz App had 2.8 million streams of the Stefan Schwartz directed “Everyone Is Implicated” episode, weve learned.
Even with the total viewership for the night for the Chris Albrecht run outlet and ahead of 2.1 million that the S5 opener delivered in Live + 3, which is a 41% life from Live + Same Day, the App is clearly where Power fans have gone to look for the Ghost, to make an in-joke about the drug business and family saga.
Making the Season 5 opener available to subscribers at midnight on July 1 AKA eight hours before it was shown on television, the Starz App saw a massive surge of 115% over streams of the Season 4 debut. Thats a premiere high for the app and a payoff in Starzs investment in its own future from one of its already most watched shows that cant be ignored It is also a warning sign to the competition on cable and more, especially after the tongue lashing that Warner Media exec John Stankley gave HBO staff at a town hall late last month after the AT&T acquisition was complete.
Perhaps more interesting for Starz and Power is that App growth continued from the July 1 S5 opener well into the July 4 holiday and beyond last week with 84% more customer adds than was experienced in 2017.
Cords? to paraphrase Doc Emmett Brown from Back to the Future, where Power is going they clearly dont need cords -cut or otherwise.
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