LOS ANGELES (REUTERS) — The new edition of the hit TV talent show “American Idol” trounced the competition in its second outing on Fox television, with a ratings performance even cynical judge Simon would love.
After back-to-back ratings victories Monday and Tuesday from “Joe Millionaire” and the season premiere of “American Idol” II, Wednesday night’s “Idol” telecast propelled Fox to a third-straight evening of top-rated viewership.
The 90-minute second episode averaged nearly 25 million viewers overall and a whopping 11.8 percent of adults younger than 50, the demographic most prized by advertisers, according to preliminary figures Thursday from Nielsen Media Research.
ABC’s hit romance reality series “The Bachelorette” proved no match for Fox’s latest search for an instant pop star, and the Walt Disney Co.-owned network finished the night a distant second in both total viewers and young adults.
Together with a top-rated episode of “That ’70s Show,” “American Idol” helped Fox to one of its best Wednesday-night showings in years and retained about 95 percent of the monster audience that tuned in for “Idol’s” second-season premiere.
Its Tuesday night debut drew 26.5 million viewers and produced the highest-rated night of entertainment programming in the News Corp. Ltd. -owned network’s history.
Both episodes bested last summer’s finale of the show’s first edition, when former cocktail waitress Kelly Clarkson was crowned as the winning “American Idol” to land an instant recording contract with RCA.
The show’s formula of amateur singers vying for fame amid barbed critiques from British record executive and judge Simon Cowell (“Go back to your vocal coach and demand a refund”) has proven an unexpected success for Fox, especially with the network’s target audience of younger viewers.
Fox kicked off its three-night winning streak Monday with a third episode of “Joe Millionaire,” featuring 20 young women vying for the affections of a faux-riche construction worker. That telecast averaged nearly 19 million viewers and a healthy 9.9 rating among young adults.
The twin reality hits of “Joe Millionaire” and “American Idol,” along with continued growth for the espionage thriller “24,” have put Fox back in the running this season for a second-place shot in the ratings race for viewers aged 18 to 49. And according to Daily Variety, it’s the first time in the current era of unscripted series one network has had two monster reality hits on the air at the same time.
Fox had stumbled in the ratings last fall, when it was forced to bench much of its new programming lineup in October because of its baseball schedule.
