Michael Becker / FOXWednesday TV's Miracle: Defying the law of prime-time gravity, American Idol's ratings went up. In total viewers, the improvement was slight, from 30.3 million viewers on Tuesday (a number that itself was up from the earlier estimated 30.1 million) to 30.4 million last night, Nielsen overnight data showed. In the demos, the show did even better—up a full percentage point among adults 18-49, up 10 percent among adults 18-34, Fox said.
Wonkish Stat to Try Out on Your Friends: According to the network, this was the first time in five years that Idol's season-opening Wednesday show outdrew its season-opening Tuesday show in total viewers and adults 18-49, and the first time ever it upgraded among the 18-34 crowd.
So, People Must Really Like the New Judge, Right? Perhaps. Or perhaps Tuesday's Idol had competition (NCIS, The Mentalist). And perhaps last night's Idol had none (three-hour Lost rerun marathon).
Knight Rider Is What It Is: Not much. Even up against Idol at 8 p.m., the canceled show was basically even with last week in viewers (5.4 million) and the demo. Also holding up okay were CBS' comedies Old Christine (7.3 million) and Gary Unmarried (7.1 million).
Fickle Youth: The teens who helped the CW's 13: Fear Is Real to a relatively successful debut last week abandoned the show last night. It fell to 1.6 million viewers overall.
Night's Biggest Show to Not Feature a Widowed Church Music Teacher Who Can Sing, Too: CBS' Criminal Minds (14 million).