Once again, Fox prevailed on Wednesday night with two hours of American Idol, which last week entered the performance and elimination rounds. Wednesday night’s show – which featured the top 12 contestants performing for the judges and viewers – averaged a 7.4 rating in the adult 18-49 demographic with 22.1 million viewers overall. That was down 9 percent week-to-week as daylight savings time continues to depress television usage in the early hours of primetime.
Idol peaked in its last half hour (at 9:30 p.m.) with an 8.2 rating and 24.1 million viewers.
CBS (3.1, 11.5 million) was second for the night with Survivor: Redemption Island (3.1, 10.5 million), Criminal Minds (3.6, 13.6 million) and Minds spinoff Suspect Behavior ((2.6, 10.3 million), which posted an 18 percent uptick week-to-week to win the 10 p.m. time period.
Univision (1.7, 4.2 million) was third for the night with telenovelas Eva Luna and Triunfo del Amor.
A rerun-heavy lineup on ABC (1.5, 4.7 million) sunk the network to fourth for the night while new episodes of Mr. Sunshine (1.8, 4.5 million) and Off the Map (1.4, 4.2 million) tied their series lows.
NBC (1.1, 3.9 million) barely had a pulse last night with Minute to Win It (0.9, 3.2 million) down 10 percent for a series low and back-to-back reruns of Law & Order: SVU posting a 0.9 and 1.5 rating, respectively.
