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.