IDOL - Up, Up and Away!

It seems we still don't know high "up" is.

The two night premiere of AMERICAN IDOL has redefined 'up' once again, delivering about 15% more eyeballs to sponsor messages than last year.

The numbers are simply gi-normous. 37 million folks. To give you some sort of scale, until this week DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES was the number one show on TV - delivering a mere 20 million viewers a week. IDOL isn't just #1, it's crossing the finish line while the other horses are entering the final turn.

The beastie out drew all the other networks combined.

Pity the poor CW. The FOX audience was 34 times larger than the CW.

One hour of IDOL = 34 hours of VERONICA MARS. That's more episodes than the show makes in a season. Granted, VERONICA was a re-run, but play along.

Following the above formula, if you were an advertiser who purchased a spot in every hour of IDOL for this season, you would have to buy VERONICA MARS once a week for 26 years to cume the same value.

26 years.