From the culmination of Fox's American Idol, to a two-hour season finale of ABC's Lost, May sweeps and the TV season will end tonight with a big bang of spectacular, head-to-head programming.
But more impressive than the prime-time lineup is what it represents: For the first time in a decade, network television will conclude a season with more viewers 18 to 49 than it had the year before. Though small, the increase halts the erosion of network TV's most lucrative audience - thanks to series like Lost and Idol.
"Any night that you have the finale of American Idol, it's a big night. The same for a two-hour episode of a very hot, scripted series like Lost," said Andy Donchin, media director of Carat USA in New York, one of the nation's largest media buying and planning groups.
"But the real story is that it's been a great year for network TV."
All six networks this season gained fewer than 1 million viewers, small potatoes when compared with the overall youth audience of 130 million members.
But the change is significant, said Donchin, one of the advertising analysts who will decide in the next few weeks how hundreds of millions of dollars in TV advertising will be spent.
After a decade of losing 3 million to 6 million young viewers a year, "the end of that erosion is an incredible accomplishment in today's fragmented, splintered world."
What began as a counterprogramming battle among the three hottest networks has evolved into a macho show of shared power - as the networks prove they're not dead yet.
Tonight's attractions are not limited to Fox and ABC, though they're airing the headliners. On CBS, Janel Moloney of The West Wing will star in Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution, a made-for-TV movie about the woman who had an affair with Scott Peterson and then testified against him in court after finding out about the disappearance of his pregnant wife.
Though not great drama, Witness is the kind of high-concept docudrama that powered network TV in its heyday - before the fragmentation brought on by cable starting in the 1980s. Even the competition is expecting Witness to find a tabloid-primed audience tonight despite the allure of Idol and Lost.
"What you're going to see with those three shows is the power of network television to amass a big audience," said Preston Beckman, executive vice president of programming at Fox, who predicted that one of every two young viewers watching TV tonight will be tuned to one of those three programs. Twenty-four million of them are expected to watch network TV tonight.
