The tenth season of “American Idol,” which recently received praise from former judge Simon Cowell, continues to hold its own in the ratings.
Wednesday’s Top 13 performance show garnered a solid 8.0 adults 18-49 rating with 24.25 million viewers. Within the demo, that performance is in-line with the number for last year’s Top 12 show, the nearest equivalent. Viewership, however, was up by nearly two million.
Worth noting, of course, is the fact that last year’s episode went against a full slate of original episodes (including ABC’s “Lost” and CBS’ “NCIS”). This year’s show faced virtually no original competition.
And, insofar as “Idol” tends to trend downward ahead of the two finale episodes, it is still too early to determine whether “Idol” will pace ahead of last year’s competition as it gets deep into the finals.
— Elsewhere, ABC served up an original “Mr. Sunshine” behind a re-run of “Modern Family.” The Matthew Perry-starrer continued to struggle, delivering a mere 1.8 rating with 4.75 million viewers (the “Modern” re-run scored a 2.3 rating). 10PM series “Off the Map” averaged a meager 1.4 with 4.31 million viewers, finishing in third behind a new “Suspect Behavior” (2.2 rating, 9.06 million) and a re-run of “Law & Order: SVU” (same 1.4 in the demo but 5.30 million viewers).
The CW ran “America’s Next Top Model” (1.1 rating, 2.33 million viewers) and “Shedding for the Wedding” (.5 rating, 1.03 million).
