Olympics Hands American Idol First Loss In Six Years
Shaun White, Lindsey Vonn, Shani Davis…your new American Idols!
For the first time in six years, American Idol did not finish #1 in the ratings – losing last night to NBC’s Olympics coverage that featured some big name Americans winning gold. The win had NBCU President Jeff Zucker bragging early this morning.
NBC’s press release called it “the greatest single day in Winter Olympics history,” as Team USA brought home more medals than any other day in Olympic history. But the big victory for NBC was in the ratings. For the first time since May 17, 2004, FOX’s ratings juggernaut, American Idol lost. That’s 222 straight episodes finishing #1.
And it wasn’t that close. NBC drew an estimated 29.4 million viewers during the 9pm hour, compared to just 18.4 million viewers for FOX. The Olympics won in 53 out of the 55 metered markets, compared to just 5 out of 55 the night before in the head-to-head competition. It’s a big victory for NBC – and despite Davis winning gold, the real stars this year for USA proved to be on the snow.
This morning NBCU President Zucker made a cameo appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, when he showed up next to Willie Geist who was hosting from Vancouver. It was just 5:30am local time, and Zucker joked, “I was just on my way home from last night.”
But the big topic of excitement was what had potentially just happened. “Perhaps for the first time in maybe six years a program looks like it may have beat American Idol,” he said. “A big night, and we’re very excited.”
Zucker also said this about broadcast TV in general:
People are really still coming to these major events, broadcasting. I talk about the great success of MSNBC, all of our cable networks, what we also see is that broadcating still works. The pipes still work, you put on programming that’s compelling and the people want to watch, and the people are there.
(image via Vonn’s Twitter feed)
Here’s Zucker on Morning Joe:
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