On "American Idol" this season, I have to say that I think Clay Aiken has been kind of pitchy, David Cook has been hot, Ruben Studdard has been sweaty, Adam Lambert has been screechy and Fantasia Barrino has been consistently awesome.
I kid! I'm not quite that clueless. Though I've not been watching the 10th season of the show very closely, I'm still somewhat in the loop thanks to Ad Age Executive Editor Judann Pollack's must-read columns chronicling the revamp of one of pop culture's most powerful broadcast brands. Her most recent in particular -- Pop Goes 'American Idol,' Proving Again that Crowds Don't Have Wisdom -- almost made me feel bad, like I'm in dereliction of my duties as a media columnist by not tuning in every single episode. (Thank goodness for CliffsNotes -- I mean JudyNotes.)
Yep, somehow "Idol" is back at the center of the American pop-cultural conversation -- and nowhere is that more obvious than on Twitter, where the show keeps on gaining momentum as the season progresses. Which brings me to this week's charticle -- which includes data collected and parsed, as always, by our editorial partner Trendrr, the social-media monitoring firm. Some notes:
- Since Jan. 16, "American Idol" has been name-checked in an average of 65,000 tweets (including related terms like #americanidol) on the days it airs, and around 5,000 to 10,000 per day on the days it doesn't air.
- The show's Twitter peaks so far came on Jan. 19, the day of the season premier (for a total of 172,873 tweets) and on April 8, the day after the show winnowed down to its final 8 contestants (for a total of 122,938 tweets).
- Another notable high over the past month came on April 7, with 26,413 tweets in one peak hour.
- Trendrr estimates that since Jan. 16, tweets about "American Idol" have come from 35% men, 65% women.
- Trendrr, which recently added Facebook data to its arsenal, also notes that the show has been "liked" an average of 15,000 times a day since April 3 -- for a total of 5,356,240 likes as of this writing.
- But what about the ratings ? As the Daily Mail put it this morning: "You might have thought that the loss of American Idol's most iconic judge would mean the end for the show. Instead it seems that the loss of Simon Cowell could have been Idol's saviour. The resulting injection of fresh opinions in the form of Jennifer Lopez and Steve Tyler has revitalised idol, halting the steady decline in viewers seen for the last four years. It is now drawing in an average of 25 million viewers, matching last year and marking the first time since 2007 that rating haven't fallen."
Dumenco's Trendrr Chart of the Week is produced in collaboration with Wiredset, the New York digital agency behind Trendrr.
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" media columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.
