AMERICAN IDOL DOWN, BUT WAY UP OVER RIVALS

Its ratings may still be way off from what they were a year ago, but Fox’s American Idol was up slightly from last week and still strong enough to land far out in front of every other television show Thursday night. The one-hour results show attracted 15.34 million viewers, according to overnight Nielsen ratings. Nevertheless CBS’s The Big Bang Theory airing a repeat opposite Idol, held its own. The 8:00 p.m. episode drew 9.58 million viewers. The sitcom returned at 9:00 p.m. with another repeat, this time drawing 10.25 million viewers. Most other shows repeated last week’s ratings, except for ABC’s Scandal, which built on its numbers from its first episode the previous week.