NEW YORK (AP) - Simon Cowell may have left “American Idol,” but he didn’t take many viewers with him.
Any hope that Fox’s rivals had that the acerbic British judge’s exit after last season would do serious damage to the talent competition has been dashed. It remains television’s dominant prime-time show, with its two editions last week easily topping anything else on the air.
The Nielsen Co. said that the show is averaging 25.1 million viewers this season, down by just under 2 percent from last year’s 25.5 million, despite losing its dominant personality. Cowell and fellow judge Kara DioGuardi were replaced by professional musicians Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler.
Last week’s performance show on Wednesday had 22.6 million viewers, and the results show had 19.6 million. The comparable two shows last year, which aired on Tuesday and Wednesday, had 22.9 million and 20.5 million, Nielsen said.
The finale of ABC’s “The Bachelor” and the special where Brad Womack explained his choice followed “Idol” in the ratings competition last week.
Fox won the week’s ratings competition for the third straight week, with CBS again airing reruns of some of their most popular shows.
Fox had an average of 9.4 million viewers in prime time (5.5 rating, 9 share). CBS had 8 million viewers (5.0, 9), ABC had 6.3 million (3.9, 7), NBC had 5.4 million (3.5, 6), ION Television had 1.3 million (0.9, 2) and the CW had 1.1 million (0.7, 1).
Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a prime-time average of 3.9 million viewers (2.0 rating, 3 share). Telemundo had 1.2 million (0.7, 1), TeleFutura had 640,000 (0.3, 1), Azteca had 220,000 and Estrella had 210,000 (both 0.1, 0).
NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9.1 million viewers (5.9, 12). ABC’s “World News” was second with 8 million (5.4, 11) and the “CBS Evening News” had 6 million viewers (4, 8).
A ratings point represents 1,159,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 115.9 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of March 14-20, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 22.58 million; “American Idol” (Thursday), Fox, 19.57 million; “The Bachelor: After the Final Rose,” ABC, 13.96 million; “The Bachelor,” ABC, 13.88 million; “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 13.72 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 12.75 million; “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 12.48 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 11.94 million; “Undercover Boss,” CBS, 11.7 million; “Bones,” Fox, 11.61 million.
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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox and My Network TV are units of News Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by General Electric Co. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks. TeleFutura is a division of Univision. Azteca America is a wholly owned subsidiary of TV Azteca S.A. de C.V.
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