American Idol Ratings: Idol Beats the ‘Dancing’ Finale

By On 05/26/2010 · 8 Comments · In American Idol, Ratings

The American Idol Final beat the Dancing with the Stars finale. But, as Mediaweek’s Marc Berman points out. 19.6K is a long way from Idol’s 30K heyday:

The final American Idol performance show opened the evening for Fox with a very dominant 19.60 million viewers and a 6.6 rating/19 share among adults 18-49 from 8-9 p.m. As good as that still is, it does pale in comparison to its 30-million heyday. Although I personally changed my tune and joined camp Lee a few weeks ago, Mama Sox stole the show last night and deserves to win. Glee followed on Fox with 11.49 million viewers (#3) and a first-place 4.8/13 in the demo. Comparably, retention for Glee out of the 8:30 p.m. portion of American Idol (Viewers: 21.31 million; A18-49: 7.2/20) was 59 percent in total viewers and 67 percent among adults 18-49.

Over at ABC, a repeat of last week’s episode of Dancing With the Stars (Viewers: #3, 9.44 million; A18-49: #4, 1.6/ 5 at 8 p.m.) led into the two-hour season-finale, which scored a hefty 18.18 million viewers and a 3.8/10 among adults 18-49 from 9-11 p.m.

via Mediaweek

 
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  • barnie

    What was the ratings for last year’s Idol finale?

  • Valentin432

    Hum, you could spin this positively or negatively.
    I’m going to stick with the positive side, it’s more or less what I expected and they beat DWTS finale which was big competition.

  • ggdoorsfan

    …these are the nielsen viewer numbers for finale night ratings from s1-8… to give us an overview/benchmark for the ratings that will be posted by nielsen tomorrow, for tonight’s show… highest rated finales are bolded… dunno… unless there is a serious uptick in viewers tonight, s9′s numbers aren’t looking good… anything is possible, so we shall see….
    ==============================================

    season 1, 2002 [Clarkson] – 22.8m

    season 2, 2003 [Studdard] – 38.0m

    season 3, 2004 [Barrino] – 28.8m

    season 4, 2005 [Underwood] – 30.3m

    season 5, 2006, [Hicks] – 36.4m

    season 6, 2007 [Sparks] – 30.7m

    season 7, 2008 [Cook] – 31.7m

    season 8, 2009 [Allen] – 28.8m

  • http://mjsbigblog.com/luvadamlamberts-american-idol-tour-2009-washington-dc-re-cap.htm luvadamlambert

    Wow,last season matched S3..I’m pretty impresses

  • FREIDAG

    season 8, 2009 [Allen] – 28.8m

    And only 19.6 mil this time around? That’s a big laughable drop.

  • bridgette12

    19.6 is what I expected. I certainly didn’t think it was going to jump up in ratings, since it’s been falling for weeks. It’s a shame this juggernaut that use to steamroll the competition is barely getting a little over 19 million. There’s a lot of reasons why this was a terrible season, but in the end the audience tunes in to watch the contestants, unfortunately this year they just picked the wrong bunch of contestants.

  • hoosiermama

    season 8, 2009 [Allen] – 28.8m

    And only 19.6 mil this time around? That’s a big laughable drop.

    The first is the number for last year’s finale show, and the 19.6 is for this year’s Tuesday night final performance show. Apples and oranges! Last year’s Tuesday night show drew 23.1 million with an 8.3 rating/24 share, down 15% from season 7 (see MJ’s archives for 5/20/09). So, the number will probably be bigger tonight, but also probably smaller than last year’s 28.8 m

    ETA: This also from the archives:

    Just for a fun comparison, let’s check out the performance final ratings for Seasons 5-7.

    * Season 5 – 32 million viewers – 12.3 rating/24 share
    * Season 6 – 25.3 million viewers – 9.7 rating/27 share
    * Season 7 – 27.1 million viewers – 10.1 rating/28 share

  • Kitwana

    Just for a fun comparison, let’s check out the performance final ratings for Seasons 5-7.

    * Season 5 – 32 million viewers – 12.3 rating/24 share
    * Season 6 – 25.3 million viewers – 9.7 rating/27 share
    * Season 7 – 27.1 million viewers – 10.1 rating/28 share

    So the Season 8 performance show was about 4 million down from Season 7 and Season 9 is about 3.5 million down from Season 8. Was bump in Season 7 a blip in a show that was otherwise declining after Season 5 or did the changes to the show introduced in Season 8 bring on the demise? I say the latter. I will never understand why the producers decided to bring on the changes that they did in Season 8 after the apparent bounce back in Season 7. Does anyone know?