Tuesday TV's Big Number: Four million. That's how many viewers, give or take a few hundred thousand, that American Idol was down. Not from last year, from last week. (Compared to last year, last night's country-fried Idol, which averaged 21.5 million, per preliminary Nielsen estimates, was off by about 6 million.)
What Happened? Competition, for one thing. At 8 p.m., the Dancing With the Stars recap show (8.1 million) gave ABC 3 million more viewers in the hour versus last week. At 9 p.m. the Belinda Carlisle-evicting DWTS results show (12.4 million) boosted the network's performance by about 10 million viewers. CBS, likewise, beefed up, though not nearly as much, with new episodes of NCIS (15.5 million) and The Mentalist (15.4 million).
Don't Blame Adam Lambert for Scaring Off the Customers: The Wicked man's freaky "Ring of Fire" aired in the 8:30 p.m. half hour, or 30 minutes after Fox's Idol started off especially weak (and with DWTS, at that point, largely a nonfactor).
No Heroes: Although Idol took a hit, the other shows didn't fatten up at its expense. The DWTS results show, for one, was down by about 5 million viewers from last fall's average.
Corned Beef-and-Cabbage Hangover? ABC sorta blamed Irish people, or, well, St. Patrick's Day, for the night's off numbers, noting that "overall primetime TV usage levels were down notably among adults 18-49 from the prior Tuesday."
Etc.: Law & Order: SVU (10.6 million), The Biggest Loser (7.9 million) and Reaper (1.9 million) joined the club—they were all down from last week, too. If 90210's reruns fall any further—just 763,000 tuned in last night's—Nielsen measurement may not be necessary, or possible.