The departure of Simon Cowell from American Idol all but assured a drop in the ratings for season ten. Sure enough there was a dip, and a pretty substantial one at that.
Last night’s premiere episode of American Idol with Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez joining Randy Jackson on the judges panel drew 26.1 million total viewers. That’s a 13% drop from last season’s premiere and the biggest season-to-season drop ever for the show.
While the drop is not in the range where Fox needs to be pounding on the panic button just yet, there are some signs that Idol won’t be quite as attractive to advertisers this year. Preliminary results suggest the premiere pulled in a 9.7 amongst adults in the 18-49 demo, a whopping 18% drop from last season. Lowering the contestant minimum age to 15 to attract more Justin Bieber-aged fans likely had a part in that. Should multiple teenagers make it into the final round then that gap could widen.
Idol will next move to its new night on Thursdays and face stiffer competition. Although viewership increased throughout the premiere, callers into a local radio station here were almost unanimously turned off by the now “nice” judge entourage and are bailing on the show.
Week two’s ratings are surely headed down again now that the “newness” of post-Cowell has worn off. For Fox’s sake they better not plunge another 10% or more.
Source: EW
