The capacity of “American Idol” as a television phenomenon was expressed Tuesday night when the singing competition on Fox convincingly beat the snow-and-ice competition (also known as The Olympics) on NBC. Authors – Bill Carter and Richard Sandomir – from the New York Times go on to inform us that no one should really be surprised about this. Absolutely nothing on any other channel combined has beaten an edition of “Idol” in almost six years! The last show to beat “Idol” would be an episode of Fear Factor on NBC in May 2004. This year “Idol” (for two hours) attracted 23.6 million viewers, while the Olympics pulled in 19.7 million. Similar results happened four years ago when the Olympics were in Turin, Italy. “Idol” (for one hour) reached 27 million viewers compared with 16.1 million for that night of the Olympics.

NBC did better after “Idol” ended; Olympic viewership rose to 23 million from 10 to 10:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time from 19.9 million in the last 15 minutes against the Fox series. The disparity in the younger adult audience, those age 18-49 – usually the gold standard of prime time – also shrank, though the power of “Idol” might have been responsible for driving NBC down below the Turin results for the first time in any category. The Olympics on Tuesday averaged a 5.4 rating in the 18-49 group while “Idol” averaged a 9.1. NBC noted that the Vancouver Games has so far demonstrated a significant upward trend among viewers 18 to 24 and 18 to 34.

Reading these facts and numbers looks like narrowcasting. Even though it looks like narrowcasting and smells like narrowcasting – I don’t believe it is narrowcasting. Narrowcasting is the dissemination of information (usually by radio or television) to narrow audience, not to the general public. At one glance, NBC and Fox are talking about the age group of only 18-49 to compare more numbers and facts. But, what about the teenagers and youngsters below 18 and the older people above 49? Do they just want to target that age group or do they want everyone to watch, but are they more interested in the 18-49 group? At another glance, “American Idol” and The Olympics are pretty open and objective to the general public because they both want everyone to watch their show. In the end, at both glances, I don’t think either of them is narrowcasting because they still want as many people as possible to watch. What do you think?

Personally, I am not a fan of “American Idol” and really haven’t been watching the Olympics lately. I respect what “American Idol” has done in the past years and years to come with being one of the biggest watched television show ever. Same towards the Olympics because, well – it’s the Olympics. The question everyone is asking is will anyone be able to beat “American Idol” or will it dominate for years to come because there is no way to take it down?

-Andrew

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/sports/olympics/18ratings.html?ref=media

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