Idle Idol Ratings?

by nicole ~ May 21, 2009

 It’s a tough world out there…today one of my colleagues overheard someone on the street say:

“Kris Allen won American Idol and Shawn Johnson won Dancing with the Stars…what is this world coming to?”

That’s a great question!  What seems even more startling is that ratings for the show are actually going down.  How can this be?

All joking aside, I did kind of wonder.  According to this article from MSNBC, this year’s run set a voting record of 624 million over the entire season. 

Thankfully this Gawker post cleared things up for me.

“See, ratings numbers are in the first curling and browning stages of being rendered useless. Because people are stopping watching television all across the board-from Animal Planet to Zoey 101-what with DVRs and magic television-playing computers and so much choice that one just sits staring blankly at the black screen, overwhelmed with having to make a decision.”

So with DVR and people watching on their computers, how is American Idol still making the big advertising dollars?  According to Gawker:

Basically, anyone who was watching TV last night was watching American Idol. And that’s all that advertisers can have the power to care about anymore. If there were only three people left watching television the whole world over, the show that two of those people were watching would be the golden goose.

Thank goodness the sky isn’t falling…and American Idol just might be around for a while.

Nicole Amato is an Account Executive at Mediashop PR and a graduate of Northeastern University with a BA in Journalism.