TV Ratings: ‘American Idol’ Finale Hits 7-Week High Note Ahead of Taylor Swift’s ‘City of Lover Concert’
By Will Thorne
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Last night’s first ever virtual “American Idol” finale hit a seven-week viewership high note for ABC.
The singing competitions series’ season 18 curtain call scored a 1.0 rating among adults 18-49, ticking up from last week, and 7.3 million total viewers. While that’s down over 1 million viewers from last season’s finale, it’s still roughly even with the season 16 ending, and represents a decent recovery following the show’s slip to lows of 5.5 million viewers a few weeks ago. “Idol” was preceded by an “America’s Funniest Home Videos” episode with a 0.7 and 4.6 million viewers, and followed by the Disney-owned network’s special airing of the Taylor Swift “City of Lover Concert” with a 0.5 and 3.6 million viewers.
On a night with plenty of finales, some of the others failed to take off, like for instance the “Batwoman” season 1 closer, which came in even at a 0.2 rating and 752,000 total viewers, down on the season average of 1 million pairs of eyeballs. “The Supergirl” finale came after with a 0.2 (up fractionally from last week) and 627,000 total viewers.
Over on Fox, sports fans have clearly been revving to go with no events to cheer on due to the coronavirus pandemic, as Nascar returned to big numbers with a race in Darlington, South Carolina. A total of 6.3 million viewers tuned in to the event, which represents a 38% bump from the previous race on March 8. Meanwhile the network’s Animation Domination Sunday lineup all had their finales last night, with “The Simpsons,” “Bob’s Burgers” and “Duncanville” all ticking up to a 0.6, a 0.5 and a 0.4 respectively. “Simpsons” drew the largest audience on the night with 1.9 million, followed by “Family Guy” (which came in even ratings-wise at a 0.5) with 1.5 million, then “Bob’s” with 1.3 million and “Duncanville” with 1.2 million.
CBS continued its run of classic movies on Sunday night with “Mission Impossible” scoring a 0.4 rating and 3.9 million viewers. “60 Minutes” topped the night with a 0.7 and just under 10 million viewers, while a “Man With a Plan” replay delivered a 0.3 and 1.9 million.
Finally on NBC, “Little Big Shots” came in even at a 0.3 and 2.1 million viewers, followed by the “Beverly Hills Dog Show” special and “The Wall” which both scored the same rating and around 2 million viewers each.
