The "Idol" factor continues to influence the success of those outside of its broadcast competition as "Sopranos" took it on the chin in their second week running opposite of "Idol" in its first hour.
The first week for "Sopranos" on A&E had them starting off great, with a record 4.3 million viewers, the highest off-network series premiere in the history of basic cable.
Starting at the same time as "Idol" broght the show back to reality as it lost 49 percent of its overall viewers, with 57 percent of those between 18-34 and 50% of those between 18-49 dropping out this week. A&E has back-to-back shows of "Sopranos" playing, and even the second show at 10 p.m. backed off by 37 percent after "Idol" was over.
The pressure is on for A&E with their $2.5 million per episode costs, still in ages of 25 to 54, the network came in first for the night of all basic-cable networks.
It seems like the 10 p.m. show will have a lot of pressure on it to gain back viewers after "Idol" finishes up for the night. Everyone is watching the experiment closely to see if an edited series can perform strong after it's cleaned up. That and the fact that shows with continuous storylines tend to not perform as well as self-contained stories that finish up in the hour they show, make this important to see if these trends can be broken with an a-list series.
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