The Cultural Craze Known as American Idol

I hate to admit it but one of my favorite guilty pleasures is to watch American Idol every week. Apparently, according to the Neilson ratings, I am not the only one. During the week of March 24 American Idol had over 25 million viewers. American Idol first began in 2002 and has been gaining viewers ever since. It originated from the British reality show Pop Idol which first aired in 2001. Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal said “[He] thinks Idol is the most impactful show in the history of television”.

Other shows in the same timeslot cannot even compare to the American Idol phenomenon. A March 27^th article from Zap2it.com showed that American Idol is continuing to rule in the ratings with minimal resistance from other networks. In the Wednesday night 9pm time slot American idol ran against a rerun of “Criminal Minds” from CBS and a rerun of the CW’s “Girlicious”. It seems the networks know that American Idol will win every week so they don’t even try anymore. They rearrange their schedules lessen their losses. Competing networks are even calling the show “The Death Star”

Ratings statistics and calculations can sometimes be difficult to interpret. In simple terms the rating percentage is dividing the number of people watching the specific program divided by the total number of people watching TV in a single minute. For the week of March 28^th American Idol was rated 15.1% which is significantly more than CBS’s criminal minds which was airing at the same time. Share, on the other hand, by definition is the percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. During this week American Idol scored a 24 when criminal minds only scored a 7. American Idol rises above the competition in both the ratings percentage and share.

American Idol has consistently dominated the ratings and created such a reputation for itself, that I believe the show can be moved to anytime slot any night and still stay high in the ratings. There are very few television programs that have as much success. The only show that I feel can compete with American Idol would be ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars”. The week of March 24^th “Dancing with the Stars” came in third with slightly over 20 million viewers, 5 million less than American Idol. Overall, American Idol is a cultural phenomenon that has took American by storm and, as proven by the ratings, has no signs of stopping.