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Render all things unto Idol

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American Idol's Final 10 and Lost's Hurley. Fox, ABC photos

By ED BARK
It's really not fair, is it?

After a ratings sag during audition rounds, Fox's American Idol is back on track as prime-time's imperious, ruling Caesar.

So much so that the latest weekly national Nielsen ratings (March 10-16) reduce everything else to head-catchers at a medieval execution.

In prime-time's two key measurements -- total viewers and 18-to-49-year-olds -- last week's two editions of Idol more than doubled the audience for their closest competitor.

The Tuesday performance show averaged 29.9 million viewers, with Wednesday's results edition kicking in another 27.1 million. The No. 3 attraction, CBS' Survivor: Micronesia, drew 13.2 million viewers, with ABC's Lost in the fourth spot at 12.1 million.

Among advertiser-craved 18-to-49-year-olds, the Tuesday and Wednesday Idols respectively held the two top spots with 14.4 million and 13.4 million viewers. Third-place Lost managed 6.5 million, followed by Survivor's 5.7 million.

Idol's annual January re-launch has enabled Fox to make a mockery of the race for ratings supremacy among 18-to-49-year-olds. The network has soared to an average of 5.7 million viewers in this key demo through the first 25 weeks of the 2007-08 season. Runnerup ABC is averaging 4 million.

The total viewers race also has gone Fox's way. The network has never won a regular season ratings race in this measurement. But it now leads second-place CBS -- 11.5 million to 10.5 million -- as the strike-impaired season heads for the home stretch.

CBS and ABC will rally in the coming weeks with new episodes of their most popular series. But neither, rain, sleet, snow, the CSI franchise or Grey's Anatomy will be able to deter Idol from its appointed rounds at the top of the weekly ratings.

NBC's cupboard will be the barest this spring. The Deal Or No Deal-dependent Peacock has no bonafide big scripted hits, although Law & Order: SVU will do more than OK with new episodes.

Meanwhile, The CW is desperately siphoning gas. It's not even a serious threat to Univision anymore. In the latest weekly ratings, the Spanish language network averaged 3.4 million total viewers and 1.9 million 18-to-49-year-olds. CW's averages were 2.4 million and 1.3 million. Its most-watched program of last week -- the soon-to-be-departing Friday Night Smackdown! -- drew 4.3 million viewers. That same night's episode of the telenovela Al Diablo Con Gaupos had 4.5 million viewers on Univision.

In the cable universe, USA network topped last week's Nielsens with a prime-time average of 2.8 million total viewers. Note that this is also a bigger haul than CW had.

Rounding out cable's top five were The Disney Channel (2.4 million to tie CW); TNT and TBS (2 million apiece) and Fox News Channel (1.9 million).
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