Tv Ratings, The Voice | featured news

Two popular reality shows made a splash upon their re-entry during the past week – and a new one had a strong debut. A new episode of "Dancing With the Stars" premiered on ABC last week before 17 million viewers, just behind CBS drama "NCIS" as the week's most popular program. It was down to 14.5 million Monday night, facing competition from the return of "The Voice" on NBC.

There was lots of good news on Monday night, as "The Voice" and "Dancing with the Stars" both saw week-to-week growth and helped carry NBC and ABC to their regular Monday split.

NBC is back in the game! The 2012-13 TV season officially kicked off Monday, and NBC — armed this time with “The Voice” — more than doubled its performance, causing its competition to take some major hits.

After NBC dropped from first among young Monday viewers last week, "The Voice" got a bit of a finale bump and helped the network reclaim that crown. ABC still easily won Monday overall, thanks to "Dancing with the Stars" and a "Castle" finale bump.

Thursday was a big day at Fox. In the morning, the network got word from Nielsen that — after Wednesday night’s Top 5 performance show — “American Idol” had regained its throne as the No. 1-rated entertainment series among younger viewers, who are the currency of broadcast TV ad sales. To accomplish that, “Idol” had to edge past NBC’s singing competition, “The Voice.”

Having the top show on television presents a rare opportunity for any network, but especially NBC, which has been so far behind for so long... This week “The Voice” emerged as the unlikely winner of its own reality competition. With a 6 rating, it displaced Fox’s long-running “American Idol” as America’s top-rated television series.

The second week of NBC’s singing competition, “The Voice,” snagged more than 16 million viewers Monday from 8 to 10 p.m. — the time slot in which the network had averaged a measly 5.6 million viewers this season.

How many singing competition shows can America watch each week? That’s the question being asked now that NBC’s “The Voice” has started its second season with a bang, while Fox’s long-running “American Idol” has seen its ratings decline. “It’s still very early on for ‘The Voice,' but they got a great start coming out of the Super Bowl with 37.6 million viewers,” media analyst Brad Adgate of Horizon Media told Fox411.com. “The most watched ‘American Idol’ was the finale between Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard in 2003, with a little over 38 million viewers.”

One week can easily be a fluke, but after ratings for "The Voice" rose for Week 2, it can safely be said that NBC has a hit on its hands. The singing talent show added viewers, particularly young viewers, for its second airing and helped NBC split the first Tuesday of May Sweeps with CBS.