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‘American Idol’ Reclaims Its Thursday Supremacy — Did ‘Cliffhanger’ Stage Fall Have Anything to Do With It?

Feb 10, 2012  •  Post A Comment

With “American Idol” getting a bump in the ratings and reclaiming its top dog status on Thursday night, Fox took the top spot in the key 18-49 demo for the night, TVbytheNumbers.com reports.

“Idol” was up two-tenths from last week to a 5.7 average rating in 18-49, a better average than its 8 p.m. rival “The Big Bang Theory” (5.5) for the first time in four weeks. CBS’s “Big Bang” did win the common half-hour, when “Idol” opened with a 5.2.

Fox came out on top in prime time overall with a 4.0 average rating in viewers 18-49, ahead of CBS (3.6 average), ABC (2.6) and NBC (1.7). CBS, however, turned the tables in total viewers, winning the night by averaging 14.3 million to 12.2 million for Fox, 7.3 million for ABC and 3.9 million for NBC.

“Idol” may have benefited from an incident in Wednesday’s show, when a contestant fell off the stage and the show left her fate as a cliffhanger at the end of the show, as previously reported. The show’s decision not to reveal the outcome of the fall by Symone Black on Wednesday’s episode — along with some subsequent wisecracks by executive producer Nigel Lythgoe about the incident — created a firestorm online in the wake of the show.

It may have brought negative attention to “American Idol,” but as they say in show business, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And Thursday’s bump for “Idol” appears to reinforce that axiom.

Reuters points out that after dealing with Black’s stage fall and revealing she was OK, the episode focused on a number of other non-musical dramas, such as illnesses, complaining and arguing among contestants.

The Reuters piece notes: “More than halfway into the episode, only one thing was missing: singing. None of the groups had performed for the judges and none would for the rest of the episode.”

2 Comments

  1. The ratings had everything to do with the drama of Black’s stage fall I’m sure of it. That’s the reason I watched. I wanted to see if she was okay and listen to her sing again, but instead was lead into a show full of complaining and sickness. Ugh.

  2. You’re absolutely right Alison. The stage fall raised the ratings.
    You could say that the stage fall, was a staged fall.
    It’s not a funny thing to mention that but elsewhere on the internet there are some posts pertaining to the fall as being staged.

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