Thursday Ratings: American Idol Falls Against NCAA Basketball

By On 03/16/2012 · 72 Comments · In American Idol, Ratings

Share on TumblrShare via email

Ratings are in from TVByTheNumbers

A one hour version of American Idol was 4.5 adults 18-49 rating, vs. a 4.9 rating last week. Even with a repeat of Touch, Fox topped the nights adults 18-49 ratings averages.

Idol was up against NCAA basketball.

8:00PM

FOX American Idol 4.5 14 15.520
NBC Community 2.2 7 4.894
ABC Missing (series premiere) 2.0 6 10.560
CBS 2012 NCAA Basketball Tournament (8-11p) 1.7 5 4.721
CW The Vampire Diaries 1.2 4 2.622

8:30PM

NBC 30 Rock 2.0 6 4.045

9:00PM

ABC Grey’s Anatomy 3.0 8 9.673
NBC The Office 2.3 6 4.876
FOX Touch -R 2.2 6 8.667
CW The Secret Circle 0.7 2 1.619

9:30PM

NBC Up All Night 1.7 4 3.631

10:00PM

ABC Private Practice 2.2 6 7.005
NBC Awake 1.6 4 5.052

 
← Older Comments
  • Hazehel

    The decline in viewership for broadcast television doesn’t explain why idol has declined between season 5 and 10 on its own.

    It does actually.  For example, in Season 7, the general decline in viewer number for network TV for 2007-2008 was ~10%, and the drop in Idol viewer number was just that – 10%.  
    The drop in viewer number for the network has been quite sharp the last decade.  Here’s a random weekly number from 2003 –  
    http://www.medialifemagazine.com/news2003/feb03/feb24/3_wed/news1wednesday.html     
    The #25 show had  13.5 million viewers.  Last week Smash was the #25 show, and it had 7.8 million viewers -  
    http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/03/13/tv-ratings-broadcast-top-25-the-voice-american-idol-big-bang-theory-top-week-25-ratings/124173/   Almost half the viewers have disappeared from network TV.   (reposted because the last one somehow disappeared.)

  • Hazehel

    But, the ratings increased in an incredible way from season 1 to the start of season 6 during a period when ratings were already declining.

    The point I am making is that Idol’s ratings didn’t decline disproportionately to the rest of network which is what you were suggesting.  There is nothing exceptional about the decline in Season 7 or 8.   You can say that those 2 season stayed reasonably steady in relation to the rest of the broadast network.   Season 9 was a bad season, so the drop might have been more than usual.   But Season 10 went up, so it did better in comparison to the rest of the TV networks.

    The drop for Season 11 however is due to something else entirely, the glut of singing shows, X-Factor, stupid Idol producers decision, etc..  

  • http://twitter.com/tinawinabina Tinawina

    The decline has been sharp for the past 30 years, if Idol followed the general decline in broadcast from season to season, it would have
    been canceled by season 3.

    But, the ratings increased in an incredible way from season 1 to the
    start of season 6 during a period when ratings were already declining.

    Yes, lots of TV shows that were hits climbed against the tide at first. Many shows saw a period where their ratings climbed despite the general decline in TV viewership. Idol’s ratings going up was NOT unusual, that is how a lot of hit TV shows behave. That is how The Voice is behaving… its ratings now are higher that last year. AI just got higher than everyone else and its ascent took a long time. But so did Modern Family’s(?) and NCIS is still rising.

    Shows reach a point where they have gained all the audience they are going to gain, then the name of the game is to hold on to what they have for as long as they can, and when people quite naturally begin to tune out they try to slow down that process for as long as possible.

    Idol peaked in S6 then basically ran in place for a few season since its decline never outpaced network TV’s. Outside of the end of Season 9, this is the first real honest-to-goodness decline IMO, and its happening alarmingly fast.

    The drop for the 18/49 demo has been fluctuating around 30%.

    Darn it! LOL

  • Elliegrll

    I’m not saying that season 10 wasn’t a success in it’s own right, and as I said, and you are repeating, the increases really took off during the final round, just like the main decreases for season 9 happened during its final round.  My point was that when we look at season 10 having the first ratings increase in five years, we are comparing it to season 9, which was a down year.  You just can’t look at the performance episodes, even though those episodes say a lot about how people feel about the contestants who are performing during the individual seasons.

  • Anonymous

    “The drop for Season 11 however is due to something else entirely, the glut of singing shows, X-Factor, stupid Idol producers decision, etc.. ”

    I agree 100% Idol has been losing about 15% of its audience (mirroring the overall decline in TV viewing) but this season on average its lost 30%. That’s a very significant increase.

  • Valentin432

     I didn’t say that the ratings dropped disproportionaly, I said that you can’t explain the drop for idol between season 6 and season 10 just by the general broadcast television drop, Idol didn’t follow that trend before so something changed between the first five seasons and the secnod five seasons other than the general trend in broadcast television.

  • Valentin432

    There are reasons that are particular to idol that made it behave the way it did for the first six seasons just like for any other show, we can’t just put it on the back of how normal tv shows behave.
    All Tv shows don’t evolfe the same way, some peak in their first season, most failed shows even peak at their first episode.
    Hit tv shows can peak afterwards but I can’t see many that peaked as late as idol did, if you look at House (season 3), scrubs (Season 2), Grey’s Anatomy (season 2), Survivor (season 2), etc.

  • Valentin432

    You want to use the ratings for this season as a proof that post idol success doesn’t matter. At the same time season 10 was a successfull season no matter the way you want to twis it and the show saw a larger decline than ever before.
    Those things doesn’t go together, you can’t use the normal explanations for season 11 with the other shows that have risen since then.

  • Hazehel

    I didn’t say that the ratings dropped disproportionaly, 

    Umm, but it is what you in effect did, because if Idol’s fall for a few years was roughly similar to the rest of the network, then whatever drop Idol had would be proportionate to the rest of the TV network.
      
    Now if you are saying something has changed, then definitely - it stopped growing as a show.   Season 6 is what started the rot  - it inherited great ratings and tremendous buzz from Season 5, started with great numbers, but then it simply started declining.  The contestant that year simply weren’t great, that’s what lost the fizz for the show.  It isn’t so much that the contestants were bad, just that the good ones weren’t interesting or exciting to the viewers.  (Stacking the shows with black girls with big voices didn’t help either, just like stacking the show with white indie girls was a bad idea for Season 9, although I think was not having good male contestants is what distinguishes a bad season.).  I would even say that without Sanjaya, the ratings drop might have been even worse.

  • http://twitter.com/tinawinabina Tinawina

    Well, I’m not trying to say it was carved in stone. You are arguing that Idol’s rise against the tide should have, what…gone on forever? That the fact it stops means something significant? And I am arguing that no, all TV shows eventually stop rising, and it doesn’t have to mean anything extraordinary. All TV shows reach a point where the creative juices don’t flow as well, the main actors leave, the cultural moment passes… whatever. You are looking for something different to explain Idol’s post season 6 ratings, and I’m saying its no more significant than any of the things that go on with any other TV show. It reached a point where it just wasn’t working to the same degree any more just like anything else. The real story is that they got it right for as long as they did to the degree that they did. The ratings curve was extended longer and went higher, but it is still the same old basic shape.

    The mojo slowed down and the show treaded water and now, after a crazy long, big run by modern TV standards, its finally starting to decline. That’s it IMO.

  • itsalleternal

    I don’t think the NCAA had much impact, since it had really low ratings for a primetime network TV sporting event.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t think The Voice had that much impact. It was mostly The X factor. There have been many singing shows on when idol was-Nashville star, rock star supernova, star search, etc. I think the x factor was just too similar.

  • Karen C

    I’m not sure if there’s really a connection or not, but I wonder if there was a ratings decrease after Season 5, if this is contributing to why the record sales of even the highest selling Idols is lower since then. Even the highest selling Idols since then have not seen sales like Daughtry, Carrie and Kelly. Maybe one reason for this is that the ratings decreased since then.

    At the same time, I think the ratings are going down even more the past couple of  years because we aren’t seeing as much originality on the show  that we saw in the previous few years,  especially Season 7 and 8.   I think those seasons brought in a lot of viewers because there was a real buzz about certain contestants that we haven’t seen the past couple of years. 

  • Anonymous

    IMO the ratings going down is inevitable.  The show is old – it’s lost its buzz/edge.  There are copycats that take away Idol’s being special.  There is, due to today’s technology, a wealth of choices beyond what was previously available even a few years ago.  And there are simply just not that many interesting singers/performers around.  Idol is starting to look like a dinosaur – and its viewers – especially the young – are losing interest.

  • breakdown

    Numbers make me dizzy so I won’t get into that but I don’t think the ratings drop should be measured until the NCAA BB tournament is finished on Thursdays. It is huge and crosses many channels and time zones. I also dvr almost everything. Where does that fit in? Does that count as full viewership?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003334810983 Lydia Deetz

    There are more OLD people than young ones that watch the show so themes are catered for this audience. Problem is, I think this just makes the old people depressed as the old songs only reminds them how OLD they are. So they stop watching the show. Teehee!

    Ok, seriously, I’m guessing another reason for the dip in viewership is that viewers aren’t motivated to support the contestants. In the last couple years, they didn’t care to buy the contestants’ albums. Seemed like whatever these AI alums put out weren’t the type of songs the viewers wanted to listen to. So, now, the viewers are thinking what’s the point to get all excited about this season?

  • Karen C

    I don’t think it’s that people aren’t interested in the albums. Even those that have done well with record sales have only sold a fraction of what would be the ratings. 

  • Elliegrll

    There are more OLD people than young ones that watch the show so themes are catered for this audience. Problem is, I think this just makes the old people depressed as the old songs only reminds them how OLD they are. So they stop watching the show. Teehee!
    Ok, seriously, I’m guessing another reason for the dip in viewership is that viewers aren’t motivated to support the contestants. In the last couple years, they didn’t care to buy the contestants’ albums. Seemed like whatever these AI alums put out weren’t the type of songs the viewers wanted to listen to. So, now, the viewers are thinking what’s the point to get all excited about this season?

    I can’t agree with that, since the majority of AI viewers have never cared about buying the music.  Even the most successful AI alums have never come close to selling 20 million or more copies of one album in the US.  There’s a huge difference between the biggest seller, Carrie’s 7 million copies for SH, and the number of people who watched her season.   And considering how long it took Carrie to reach 7 million albums sold, and the success that she has had on radio, not everyone who purchased her album are AI fans.

  • Tess

    If there is a simple answer to why things loose their mojo it would also be simple to fix…but, ha, it isn’t that “simple”.

    Reasons for decline of Idol

    1. It isn’t the New Kid on the Block
    2.  It had a 4th place finisher out perform (post idol) the 3 that were in the finals…that takes away a lot of cred.
    3.  It switched from its Tues/Wed to Wed/Thurs after a half dozen or more seasons.  Almost any show that switches sees a decline because viewers are creatures of habit.
    4.  TV viewing has changed…no more antennas.  Rise of Cable, Satellite, On Demand, Net Flix, Computer streaming, built in DVR, and especially a rise in other reality program directly targeted at the 18 to 30 subset.
    5.  Clone programming everywhere even Idol’s own station…and the one on Fox was horrendously bad and turned off lots of viewers.
    6.  Judge changes and adding 4th judge which really changed the dynamics of the program from focus on contestants to judges.
    7.  Mainstream media coverage slowed down, especially print coverage. 
    8.  Online presents everything on the program hours after actual broadcast.  Why watch when you can see the entire program sans commercials the same night…or watch the streaming East Coast version and forego watching in Mountain or Pacific coast time.
    9.  Lots more, but I’m lazy.

  • Anonymous

    I think that the judges are still not very good, even now that they have decided to judge. They don’t give particularly inghtful comments, and are neither witty, or funny or charismatic.
    The heavyweight judge is Iovine, but his comments feel prepared and he needs to take acting lessons, and of course, he comments after he knows the voting.

    They need a panel with one industry heavyweight, one artist heavyweight plus the likeable nice guy/girl. Steven can be Mr Niceguy, the other two have to go. Iovine should be on the panel, but of course he will have to demonstate his ability to give to-the-point feedback live.
    And they need to replace J-Lo with someone more knowledgeable, articulate and charismatic.

  • http://twitter.com/shoriagirl Nina Korol

    I don’t think that contestants success as recording artist has anything to do with the show ratings.  The Voice contestants have sold much less albums than any Idol alum, however, the ratings are up. 

    Sales post Idol depend on the promotion and nothing else. Daughtry got more promotion than any other contestant from his season, so he sold the most. Same goes for Lambert or Cook.  Promotion = sales.

    As far as Idol, it was always a horrible show, but it was unique, so people watched it.  Now it has competition and people choose other shows over Idol, especially younger people who are not set in their ways and didn’t make watching Idol a part of their routine.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/DKSIJKM5MSRHIOAPEEDJXMI2HY Kcvampire

     The only reason why Basketball wasn’t higher. There were 4 channels showing it and CBS didn’t show the marquee games.

← Older Comments