War of 18-49 Update, American Idol (2012-13)

Let's take a look at the 2012-13 season (the twelfth overall) of American Idol on Fox.

Timeslot	Lo	Avg	Hi	y2y	A18-49+	Label	Results
Wednesday 8:00	2.9	3.90	6.0	-27%	185	big hit	detail
Thursday 8:00	2.6	3.68	5.6	-25%	175	big hit

Rating the Ratings: American Idol followed up its first truly significant downturn with another really bad season in 2013. For the first time in nearly a decade, Idol wasn't the #1 entertainment program on TV, and it wasn't even all that close to scripted champs The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory. It actually didn't start that badly; the season premiere's 6.0 demo was down just 19% year-to-year, and a few points immediately after that were down even less. But the rains came starting around week four, and by season's end both nights had gotten more than 50% below their premiere numbers. Most points down the stretch run were down in the 30% neighborhood year-to-year. It seemed everyone finally noticed these problems when the finale numbers came in; the 3.6 demo was down a hard-to-ignore 44% year-to-year. It wasn't the fairest comparison in the world, because the night was much more competitive than usual, but the narrative was basically correct. This show's going in the wrong direction, and fast, and some heads have rolled at Fox as a result. Turning this train around will be one tough task. Grade: D.

Here's the now updated War of 18-49 post for American Idol.