The Blacklist Posts Massive Live+3 Ratings Numbers

While Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. might have had the year’s biggest drama opening, it’s Avengers: Age of Ultron villain James Spader who’s really making ratings waves; his new series The Blacklist became the first broadcast network show to add more than 5 million viewers from Live+Same day to Live+3, Deadline reports. That’s about 50% of what its original ratings were.That means that more people are watching the series on their DVR, online, etc.–but not waiting until the next episode is out–than any other show since Nielsen started tracking stuff like that. The Live+3 is something a lot of advertisers are still trying to figure out–how many of the ads did people actually see if they weren’t watching live?–but such massive audience growth can only be good for a show in terms of the potential for merchandising, tie-ins, spinoffs, DVD and Blu-ray sales, etc.It also means that in spite of appearing to have lost about 10% of its audience from the premiere to the second week, that number is actually more like 3%, compared to somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%-30% for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the only series to debut as high as The Blacklist this year.Sleepy Hollow also got about a 47% lift from same day +3, with other titles like Castle and Hostages getting big bumps as well.