Falling Idol

There's life left in it, of course, and doubtless Fox will continue to squeeze every drop from it, but American Idol is now firmly on the wane, being beaten in its slot by The Big Bang Theory.

There's a scent of panic coming from the show, scrabbling to bring back Nigel Lythgoe as executive producer and trying to drag interest out of 'look, these people are mad' and 'look, the judges are having an argument amongst themselves that isn't in any way staged, oh no.'

It's not working, though. 30% of the viewers that were still buying it this time last year have vanished; what was once an unstoppable behemoth now resembles more a smoking, stuttering bandwagon.