Led by the return of its powerhouse "American Idol," along with the high viewership of the National Football league playoff game, Fox (NYSE:NWS-A) landed the highest weekly viewership in its history; both for the key 18-49 demo, as well as overall viewers.
It was also the largest viewership for any network in 14 years. (Those results exclude Superbowl and Olympic numbers.) This led them to the expected taking over of first place in the 18-49 demo for the season. Nothing will move them out of it, and they'll only improve upon it as the year goes on.
A glance at Nielsen's estimates for the week show that the 9.5 rating/24 share for Fox, beat the combined total of the next five networks. The numbers of those networks were: NBC (NYSE:GE) (2.6/7), CBS (NYSE:CBS-A) (2.4/6), ABC (NYSE:DIS) (2.0/5), Univision (1.5/4) and USA (0.9/2).
The Natonal Football Confererence championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants averaged an extraordinary 53.94 million viewers, while also enjoying a 20.6/46 in 18-49 demo. The contest peaked in the last half-hour with 65 million viewers tuning in as the game went to overtime.
Other than the Super Bowl, this is the largest audience in 13 years for an American football game.
For "American Idol," they scored a 13.8 rating/32 share in the 18-49 demo, while drawing 33.41 million overall viewers. While a little lower than the numbers for last year, it was still well above the best premiere shows of its competitors for the season.
The Wednesday edition of the show also did very well, drawing 30.44 million viewers, and a 12.6/30 in the 18-49 demo.
In what may be even better news for Fox, their shows on Thursday night "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader," which scored a 3.7/10 and 11.58 million overall viewers and "Don't Forget the Lyrics," which ended with 3.4/9 in the key demo and 8.79 million viewers, were the hightest numbers posted for the season, and is the first time the network won Thursday night in-season with normal programming in 15 years.
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