Despite omnimpresent press, the addition of new judges Steven Tyler and J.Lo, and the promises to do better this year, ratings for the 10th season American Idol premiere fell off 13 percent from last year's 29.9 million viewership. Wednesday night's 2-hour premiere drew 26.1 million viewers. The drop among the under 18 crowd was 18 percent, according to Nielsen. (Maybe the teens were too busy playing Aerosmith's 70s classics on their Guitar Hero videogames.)
Surprised? Not really. I wouldn't necessarily blame Tyler or J.Lo or attribute too much to the absent Simon Cowell. The show's 10 year's old and 26.1 million viewers is still an impressive number these days. Plus, lest Simon fawns start crowing, note that season 9s numbers, when he was with the show, were smaller than season 8's and 8's were less than those for season 7. Plus, this 10th season is coming off the stench of the Ellen DeGeneres-Lee DeWyze-Crystal Bowersox trifecta. It might take a bit more to keep ahold of viewers. Last night's mostly enjoyable episode was a decent start.
Tonight the cast airs its New Orleans auditions. Look for live commentary from Idol Watch on my Twitter feed. http://twitter.com/HowardCohen. A review of the episode will follow on this blog post-show.
Meantime, here's another critic's point of view on last night's episode. His lede and kicker equating Steven Tyler to Carly Simon cracked me up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-levine/american-idol-season-10-d_b_811493.html
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