TVSquad

Have you been seeing all the headlines ballyhooing American Idol and how the ratings are slipping and they'd better be careful. Did you know most shows erode viewers every season? This is the first Idol season premiere to be down from the prior year, so seven seasons in before premiere numbers drop is nothing short of extraordinary. And never mind that this year's premiere reached an impressive 33.4 million, it was down 11% from last year.

Forget that more people watched American Idol than watched the other four major networks combined that night. It was down 11% from last year. Don't think about the fact that last season's record-setting premiere hit a whopping 37.1 million, making it not only the highest rated Idol debut ever, but one of the highest rated shows ever on FOX, this year was down 11% from last year. American Idol's debut is far and away the highest-rated entertainment broadcast of the season to date, handily trouncing the now second highest 25.4 million who watched the season premiere of CSI this past fall. I think the executives at ABC, CBS, NBC and The CW have been writing these headlines as wishful thinking exercises.

But this ratings slide didn't start with the premiere this season. It started somewhere in the middle of last season when Sanjaya wouldn't go home and the guest judges hogged the spotlight and we didn't care about any of the contestants. By the time it was all said and done, Season 6, which remember premiered with the highest numbers of any Idol premiere, bled more viewers between the premiere and the finale than any season before it, winding up with a season average of only 30.4 million viewers, down fractionally from 2006's average of 30.7. Of course that malaise is going to carry over to lower premiere numbers.

Let's break down season premieres and finales with their total viewers so we can see what we're looking at.

American Idol Season Premieres & Finales
AI1 Premiere (2002): 9.9 million viewers
AI1 Finale (2002): 22.7 million viewers

AI2 Premiere (2003): 26.5 million viewers
AI2 Finale (2003): 34.24 million viewers

AI3 Premiere (2004): 29.4 million viewers
AI3 Finale (2004): 28.84 million viewers

AI4 Premiere (2005): 33.6 million viewers
AI4 Finale (2005): 30.27 million viewers

AI5 Premiere (2006): 35.5 million viewers
AI5 Finale (2006): 36.38 million viewers

AI6 Premiere (2007): 37.1 million viewers
AI6 Finale (2007): 30.74 million viewers

AI7 (2008): 33.4 million viewers

Need more American Idol? Check out AOL TV's coverage -- including the best and worst Idol auditions and the roundup of Idol's biggest losers. Also: are you the ultimate Idol fan? Prove it: take Part II of their ultimate Idol quiz!

Despite the sour taste left by Season 6, those Season 7 premiere numbers are pretty damned good. Right in line with the five year average, and subsequent installments have been following the typical Idol pattern thus far. For example, Wednesday night's fourth episode had 26.8 million viewers. But the ratings always dip during this time, only to kick back up once the voting portion kicks in.

It's way too early to call this the beginning of the end for American Idol, but I'm not saying they're out of the woods. They have to win back a lot of the viewers they've lost. Lucky for them, since they're still the biggest kid on the playground, everything they do will be news so even those fans who may have strayed last season will hear everything they're doing this year. All they need now is a breakout contestant or event to generate a lot of buzz.

What they needed to not do, though, is what they've done to these audition rounds (make them suck). Kudos to them for showing us more of the talented singers because they need to give us a reason to stick around past the freak show, and there are some damned good ones, but shame on them for slowing the pace of the episodes to a crawl, spotlighting people who don't move on for way too long and scripting most of the bad singers into those terrible montages of a single song.

Hollywood week is right around the corner and then I won't care about what we did or didn't do in this round any more. All that will matter is how many good singers I get to listen to and how much Idol makes me care about them. They've already promised fewer celebrity guest mentors hogging up all the camera time and more time spent getting to know the contestants outside the show. You know like how it used to be, back when Idol was more reality and less celeb-reality. Hopefully, they don't mess with the latter round formats too much and I think we'll be fine. I'm already looking forward to several of the contestants I've seen so far and think we could be in for one of the most talented Top 24 yet... if they can survive "Hell Week" in Hollywood that is.