We Watch . . . So You Don't Have To
Oddsmakers finally got it right when they forecast "American Idol" had seen the last of Paris Bennett.
Viewers cast the fewest votes this week for the perky 17-year-old from Georgia, and the Reporters Who Cover Television finally got to use all those " 'Idol' viewers didn't love Paris in the springtime" and " 'Idol' won't always have Paris" lines they'd written in their heads for this very occasion.
  Elliott Yamin gets the good news from "Idol" host Ryan Seacrest: He's safe. But viewers said goodbye to Paris Bennett. (Photos Taken From Tv) Television Blog |
But not before she, and the four other remaining Idolettes, were made to sing "Together We Are One" onstage, surrounded by a bevy of backup singers and sounding for all the world like one of those really bad cruise performances with which show judge Simon Cowell is, inexplicably, so very familiar.
That can only mean "Together We Are One" will be one of the numbers in the next "American Idol" album. Gak!
For two weeks, a slew of online gambling sites and Dialidol.com -- the Web site that uses computers to measure phone number busy-signal rates for each "Idol" contestant's vote line (total wonk stuff ) -- had forecast the downfall of Paris. Sorry.
Last week, they got it wrong; Trampy Barbie was shown the door.
Still, this week's predictions weren't perfect. Dialidol.com, for instance, told of a Bottom Two composed of Bennett and Katharine McPhee; instead Elliott Yamin shared the Stage of Shame with Bennett.
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In theory, a "Dynasty" reunion sounded great -- miracles of plastic surgery, great clips of a show that defined the 1980s orgy of excess.
In reality, just 5.5 million people bothered to watch "Dynasty Reunion: Catfights & Caviar." That's CBS's smallest audience with original programming in the Tuesday 10 p.m. hour since at least September '91. "DR: C&C" hung on to only 38 percent of "The Unit's" lead-in audience.
Not exactly what a network hopes for on the first Tuesday of the May ratings derby.
Not surprisingly, "DR: C&C" attracted an older crowd. The show's median age was 54 years. On the other hand, it was CBS's youngest-skewing show Tuesday night.
· "The Unit" edged it out with a median age of 54.1 years, and "NCIS" creaked along with a median age of 57 .
Presumably, CBS is now through exhuming serialized soaps from the '80s for reunion specials. In November 2004, its "Dallas" reunion clocked nearly 13 million viewers, but by December 2005, its "Knots Landing" special scored a disappointing 6.9 million.
