American Idol's television viewer numbers are down significantly over those from the 2007 season. Still the popular Fox show buried all competition for the 8-10 p.m. time slot on both Tuesday and Wednesday.

Commentary: The Tuesday premiere of "Idol" came up 4 million viewers shy of the numbers for the 2007 series' debut. Wednesday saw another 3 million drop off from Tuesday causing the second show to fall 6.7 million short of the 2007 number for that season's second installment. Still, the immensely popular show crushed the competition by tens of millions of viewers, bringing in nearly as many viewers as the combined total of its three nearest rivals. NBC was second during the time slot, CBS finished third, and ABC fourth.