Listening to the Fox networks competitors describe what American Idol has done to the television landscape is not unlike listening to a group of quavering readers offer a synopsis of a Stephen King novel:  Once a year an unrelenting monster invades a town, and all the townspeople, cowed by years of being crushed under its massive claws, have to pay it fealty or run off and hide until it goes back into a six-month hibernation.  Kelly Kahl, the chief scheduler for CBS, summed up the Idol factor this way: This is a big monolith sitting out there. Its the ultimate schoolyard bully.  If any of Foxs rivals had hopes that this year might signal some hint that the monster  NBC favors the term Death Star  would finally betray some sign of weakness, those hopes were dispelled in just a week. Most television shows, no matter how successful, fall off sometime after their second or third season, but against all expectations, and most of the historic record of network television, American Idol has come back for its sixth season bigger and stronger than ever.  Last year at this time, five weeks into its season, American Idol was roaring along as televisions most-watched show, with an average of 31.7 million viewers (up substantially from its fourth season, when it averaged 28.3 million viewers over the same five weeks).  Improbably, this season the show has done even better, averaging 33.5 million viewers over its first five weeks. For perspective, at this point Idol could lose half its audience and still rank among the top 10 shows on television. And no one dares predict when this phenomenon will fade.  Idol is creating ever more powerful shock waves. A growing number of television executives have begun to regard American Idol as a programming force unlike any seen before. Jeff Zucker, the new chief executive of NBC Universal, said, I think Idol is the most impactful show in the history of television.  That takes in a lot of time and territory, but there is ample justification for the assessment, beginning with those raw numbers. Bringing in well over 30 million viewers for each installment in a television universe filled with hundreds of channels is an undeniable feat. Just about everything else in television loses viewers every year; not Idol.  Other top-rated shows have demonstrated similar dominance in the past. The Cosby Show in the 1980s, for example, regularly attracted about half of the available audience.  Still, that show accounted for just one half-hour of one night every week. American Idol has filled up to four hours on two nights for Fox so far this season. And starting tonight, it will occupy three nights a week for three weeks, expanding its reach beyond its regular Tuesday and Wednesday nights to a Thursday hour as well. There it will presumably take a serious bite out of Survivor, Ugly Betty, My Name Is Earl and The Office.  That is the last thing CBS, NBC and ABC want to see happen. One fallout from the overpowering performances of Idol on Tuesday and Wednesday nights has been a circling of the programming wagons on Monday and Thursday nights. A collection of the strongest shows the other networks program has been piling up on those two nights, out of fear that they would be chewed up by American Idol.  The most notable recent example of a shows being rescheduled out of danger was ABCs decision to protect its own reality series Dancing With the Stars from having to compete directly with Idol.  Dancing was a runaway hit last fall, when it played for 90 minutes on Tuesdays and an hour on Wednesdays. When it returns next month, it will be seen at 8 on Mondays, a night with no episodes of Idol, and at 9 on Tuesdays  just as Idol goes off the air.  ABC executives declined to comment on the influence Idol has had on their scheduling. But executives at two of the other networks noted that ABC probably had the best programming counter to Idol in Dancing, yet clearly wanted no part of that showdown.  Similarly, last winter NBC moved its promising comedies Earl and The Office from Tuesday nights, where they had thrived, to Thursday, partly to escape the annual January Idol invasion. ABC and NBC have mostly backed off from any serious challenge to Idol, relying on repeats, low-rated comedies and news magazines as cannon fodder in the hours Idol is on the air.  Only CBS has managed to eke out respectable ratings numbers versus American Idol, relying on a couple of its steady crime dramas: NCIS on Tuesday and Criminal Minds on Wednesday.
“American Idol” is bigger and stronger than ever in its sixth season, causing its competitors to do everything they can to escape its invasion.