Nielsen Reveals Data Trends for American Idol

NEW YORK, May 16: Ahead of
the finale of FOX’s American Idol next
week, The Nielsen Company has released data trends about the hit reality talent
competition show and its contestants, with the 35-to-49 demographic comprising
nearly 29 percent of the total audience for the series’ seventh season.

According to Nielsen, the
most-watched episode this season was the premiere episode on Tuesday, January
15, which averaged 33 million viewers. American Idol's highest viewership was season five, where more
than 30 million people watched on average, compared to 12 million the first
season and 27 million this current season. The east central part of the U.S.
has the highest viewing levels above the national average, while the southwest
has the lowest viewing levels below average. Overall, the most-watched American
Idol episode was the final hour of
season two on Wednesday, May 21, 2003; more than 38 million viewers tuned in
live to watch the face-off between winner Ruben Studdard and runner-up Clay
Aiken.

On the interactive front,
according to Nielsen Mobile, the average American Idol participant voted via text message 38 times in
April. Women tend to vote via text with greater frequency than men; in April,
female voters of American Idol
submitted 44 percent more text-message votes than their male counterparts.
Voting by text is only available to AT&T subscribers. Male contestants
David Cook, David Archuleta and Jason Castro dominated the show's consumer
discussion online this season, with 14.3 percent, 12.5 percent and 10.5 percent
buzz volume, respectively. The most popular American Idol contestant from opinions and feedback from Hey!
Nielsen's online panel is Carrie Underwood, while David Archuleta is this
season's most popular contender. Web traffic to American Idol websites saw the most unique visitors in March
2007. Of the top ten months ranked by unique visitors, viewers spent the most
amount of time on American Idol
websites during season five, where time spent per person was more than ten
minutes during the months of March, April and May 2006.

During 2007, American
Idol featured 4,349 product placement
occurrences. So far, the number of placements in 2008 is surging—the
program racked up 3,291 occurrences the first three months of 2008 alone.
Coca-Cola was the top American Idol
advertiser during the seventh season for the first quarter of 2008, followed by
AT&T and Ford. Procter & Gamble and Apple rounded out the top five. All
five of these companies have advertised on American Idol since 2002 and, with the exception of Apple, all
of them also held slots among the top five American Idol advertisers in the sixth season

Kelly Clarkson is the
best-selling American Idol
contestant, with album and digital download sales of 18.9 million, followed by
Carrie Underwood in second place with album and digital download sales of 15.7
million. Clay Aiken rounds out the top three with album and digital download
sales of 4.8 million and digital download sales of 469,000.
Until 2006, when the winner was Taylor Hicks, each season's American Idol champ sold at least 1 million copies on his or her
debut album.

—By Irene Lew