Idol to conduct live Twitter polls

IDOL’S FAN METER: Starting with tonight’s show viewers will be invited to tweet their responses to instant polls, the N.Y. Times reports. Questions will be along the lines of “Do you agree with the judges tonight?” followed by two hashtags with differing answers. Participating viewers will post a comment with one of the two hashtags, and Fox will update the graphic almost instantly as the results come in. They say it will look like an online tug of war. Idol’s highly visible embrace of youth-appealing social media comes at a time when the 11-year-old show’s audience is aging, with a median age so far this season of 45, down from 49 last year but up from 32 its very first year. Most shows go through a similar aging process, but the producers want to do whatever they can to stem further losses among younger viewers. Although Idol’s total audience has shrunk by nearly 50% from its peak in 2006, it still beats almost every other series on TV, with 16.1 million viewers on an average night. In the 18-to-49-year-old demo that advertisers covet, the only shows that stand taller are Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory. (2/27a)