While some are trying to make it look like "American Idol" is in trouble because they dropped in viewership from the 2007 season opener of, it's really just something to get people to read their columns.
For one thing, American Idol broke their all time record last year with 37.4 million viewers tuning in. Even with that, they ended down slightly for the season from the year before.
I would expect that as the season goes on, we'll see similar numbers as last year, and possibly even a little higher.
Even while they dropped to 33.2 million viewers for their 2008 premiere, they still finished with the highest rated show of the season, excluding sports.
From now on, every year the stories will come out on how the reality show has peaked, and will go downhill from here. But when taking into account this show could slightly erode for the next five years, and still clobber its competition, there's nothing to be too concerned about.
More important, as far as advertising goes, is how strongly the key 18-49 demo holds. That also fell in the season's first show by 13 percent.
For the night, according to preliminary Nielsen numbers, the show beat out the viewership of CBS (CBS-A), NBC (GE), ABC (DIS) and the CW combined, by a strong 12 percent. I would say they don't have much to worry about.
Once the final numbers are in, Fox (NWS-A) says they expect those numbers even to improve.
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