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"American Idol" finale audience off from last year
2007-05-24
At least 29.5 million "American Idol" fans watched the finale of the hit talent show as 17-year-old Jordin Sparks was crowned the youngest winner yet in the program's history, preliminary numbers showed on Thursday. The tally for Wednesday night's show was nearly 7 million fewer than the number of viewers who saw gray-haired soul crooner Taylor Hicks win the Fox network's prime-time amateur singing contest last year, Nielsen Media Research said. Final numbers that come out later in the day are expected to be higher, Fox said, because the show ran about nine minutes late, and the early Nielsen ratings only capture viewership through the end of the broadcast's second hour. The live, two-hour broadcast, featuring appearances by such recording stars as Gwen Stefani, Tony Bennett and Green Day, as well as many past "Idol" winners, brought a dramatic close to the 2006-07 U.S. broadcast season. By comparison, the second-season "Idol" finale in May 2003, when Ruben Studdard was crowned the winner, stands as the most watched of any episode of the series, averaging 38.1 million viewers. Fox is a unit of News Corp. Ltd.
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