American Idol, The Voice | featured news

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.

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.”