'American Idol's sixth season finale averages over 30 million viewers
By Christopher Rocchio, 05/24/2007
An average of 30.7 million total viewers watched 17-year-old Glendale, AZ-native Jordin Sparks become American Idol's sixth champion during Fox's live two-hour Wednesday night broadcast of Idol's sixth season finale. The finale also scored an 11.5/31 rating/share in the Adults 18-49 demographic.
While Idol's sixth season ratings numbers may seem impressive, they're actually somewhat low by Idol standards -- last year, nearly six million more viewers watched Taylor Hicks become the show's fifth season champion. American Idol's 124 minute fifth season finale averaged 36.4 million viewers and a 11.5/31 rating/share the Adults 18-49 demographic.
Despite the relative ratings drop, Idol's sixth season finale still beat the combined performance of the rest of the big five broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC, and The CW -- in numerous key demographic areas, including Adults 18-49, Adults 18-34, Teens, and total viewers. As one would expect, Idol's sixth season finale ratings also grew as the night progressed and averaged about 35 million total viewers during its 9:30-10PM half hour.
In comparison to Wednesday night's finale, Tuesday night's live 8-9PM ET/PT broadcast of Idol 6's final performance episode averaged 24.5 million total viewers and a 9.3/27 rating/share among Adults 18-49.
Back in January, Idol's sixth season premiere averaged 37.3 million total viewers, making it the most watched debut in the show's history. Unfortunately for Fox, the same cannot be said about the sixth season's finale. In addition to averaging less total viewers than last season's finale, Idol 6 was also more than 10 million total viewers shy of achieving it's most-watched finale, which occurred on May 21, 2003 when 38.1 million total viewers watched Ruben Studdard defeat Clay Aiken to win Idol 2's title.
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