‘Idol’ Slide Helps CBS To Another Weekly Win

NEW YORK (AP) — For the past decade, the “American Idol” season finale has been one of television’s biggest events of the year. Now it’s not even TV’s biggest event of the week.

The Nielsen company estimated that 14.3 million people watched Candice Glover’s victory over Kree Harrison in last week’s final episode of the season. Both the CBS drama “NCIS” and comedy “The Big Bang Theory” had more viewers.

The viewership was a startling half of the 29.3 million people who watched in 2011, and also down from the 21.5 million who watched last year. The judge’s feud between Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey clearly turned viewers off. Original judge Randy Jackson has already announced he is leaving and more changes are expected soon.

Ten years ago, “American Idol” hit a high-water mark with 38.1 million people watching the show’s season finale.

ABC couldn’t quite topple CBS last week, but saw some encouraging numbers: The season finale of “Scandal” had the largest audience ever for that show, while the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday had the highest viewership for that show in 10 years, Nielsen said.

In an ominous sign for the summer, Fox’s season premiere of “So You Think You Can Dance” reached only 5.1 million viewers last week.

CBS won the week in prime time, averaging 7.9 million viewers. ABC had 7.5 million, and won among the 18-to-49-year-old demographic craved by advertisers. Fox had 5.8 million, NBC had 5.5 million, Univision had 3.4 million, Telemundo had 1.6 million, the CW had 1.3 million and Ion Television had 1.2 million.

TNT was the most popular cable network for the week, averaging 3.6 million viewers in primetime. USA had 2.5 million, Fox News Channel had 2.04 million, the Disney Channel had 2.03 million and TBS had 1.6 million.

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 7.5 million viewers. ABC’s “World News” was second with 6.7 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.8 million viewers.

The Top 20

Primetime viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for May 13-19. Listings include the week’s ranking and viewership.

1. “NCIS,” CBS, 18.79 million.

2. “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 15.48 million.

3. “American Idol” (Thursday), Fox, 14.31 million.

4. “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS, 13.52 million.

5. “Dancing With the Stars,” ABC, 13.33 million.

6. “American Idol” (Wednesday), Fox, 12.11 million.

7. “Dancing With the Stars Results,” ABC, 11.87 million.

8. “The Big Bang Theory” (Thursday, 8:30 p.m.), CBS, 11.84 million.

9. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 11.29 million.

10. “Castle,” ABC, 11.16 million.

11. “Criminal Minds,” CBS, 10.56 million.

12. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 10.47 million.

13. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 10.19 million.

14. “Modern Family,” ABC, 10.03 million.

15. “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 9.53 million.

16. “Billboard Music Awards,” ABC, 9.48 million.

17. “Scandal,” ABC, 9.12 million.

18. “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC, 8.99 million.

19. “Elementary,” CBS, 8.98 million.

20. “2 Broke Girls,” CBS, 8.94 million.