City slivers seen on Philly 'Idol'

As expected, Fox's

American Idol

dominated television viewing Tuesday night - especially in Philadelphia, where the seventh season's premiere was taped over the summer.

Nielsen reported an average 22.6 rating/33 share for the two-hour show on Fox29, meaning that about 665,000 Philadelphia-area households - one-third of TV viewers - tuned to Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson and a motley crew of would-be entertainers. That's the biggest viewership a debut of

American Idol

has ever drawn in this market.

The show's 46 share among viewers ages 18 to 34 means that nearly half that night's young adult audience watched some of

Idol

.

Elsewhere, the bloom may be off the rose for the talent contest. Nationally, the Fox show drew an 18.6 rating/27 share. Though

Idol

easily won the night, the U.S. audience was 15 percent smaller than last year's premiere.

Philadelphia's national exposure was worth more than $2.62 million to the city, according to Eric Smallwood of Front Row Marketing Services, a division of Comcast-Spectacor that evaluates sponsorships and operates the Wachovia Center, site of the Philadelphia auditions.

Smallwood said that the city was referenced verbally and visually for a total of 90 seconds. He derived the dollar amount from the average price of a 30-second commercial, $875,000.

The 11 seconds of verbal mentions and facade exposure for South Philadelphia's Geno's Steaks could be valued at $320,833, Smallwood said.

The city looked good - at least, the little bit of it that the wildly popular talent hunt's vast audience got to see.

Like the good, the bad and the wacky wannabes (many of them from other places) who auditioned for judges Cowell, Abdul and Jackson, Philly had minimal time to strut its stuff.

Sure, the two-hour show opening

Idol

's seventh season was sprinkled with scenes of the city, but it was all predictable and cliched - Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the Art Museum, the Rocky statue. And the narration, courtesy of host Ryan Seacrest, sounded like prep material for contestants on Fox's

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader

?

"Philadelphia has a rich history," Seacrest intoned, reminding us that the Declaration of Independence was signed here and Betsy Ross and Ben Franklin both lived here. "Now, it's the first stop on our audition tour, and Philly is making history all over again as our biggest crowd ever showed up to audition." (

Idol

executive producer Noel Lythgoe has put the number at more than 20,000.) To make sure we got the point, there were plenty of shots of the thousands who lined up in a parking lot at the Wachovia Center on Aug. 27, hoping to be among the couple hundred selected for an audience in front of Randy, Paula and Simon.

Philadelphia came away without so much as a sneer from the famously sarcastic Cowell, whose sharp tongue hasn't lost its etch. (His parting advice to contestant Joey Catalano, who had lost 204 pounds: "Put on some weight.")

There was almost no hint of interaction between the judges and the city, except for a shot of Abdul receiving a warm greeting from a fan. Cowell, Abdul and Jackson were seen almost entirely in an antiseptic hotel conference room that could have been anywhere.

As usual in the early rounds of

Idol

, Tuesday night's program had a freak-show quality. There were some stunningly bad performances and obscenity-laced meltdowns by disappointed auditioners.

"As you would expect in the city that produced the Constitution, people were not shy about using their right to free speech," Seacrest said.

Allentown's Alexis Cohen, 23, eyelids all spangled with glitter, took freedom of speech close to its elastic limit with a post-audition verbal smackdown of Cowell that gingerly combined word and gesture.

New Hope comedian Paul Marturano, 32, a.k.a. Pauly Nipple, contributed to the weirdness quotient with "Stalker," a song he said he had written for Abdul. "I'm not much of a talker, so I guess that I'll just stalk her," he sang. Abdul, clearly not amused by Marturano's comedy, shrank toward Jackson, rousing a protective Cowell to declare that he'd heard enough. "That was really creepy," he told Marturano. "There's something very disturbing about you."

Marturano's reps, seizing the moment, circulated a news release yesterday morning touting their man's professional achievements and his efforts to save animals from euthanasia.

Still, the biggest bizarre trophy had to go to Ben Haar, 27, of Newark, Del., who went out and got his chest waxed because Abdul said she was put off by the amount of chest hair his

Star Wars

harem-girl outfit was revealing.

Amid the craziness were the nuggets of real talent

Idol

was designed to discover.

Catalano, the contestant who had dropped all the weight, wowed the judges with Maroon 5's "Sunday Morning" and moved on to the next round.

"Great voice," Cowell told the 19-year-old from Mays Landing. "Based on the first round, I think you've done very well, Joey. Very, very well."

A total of 29 contestants made the cut, but the TV audience saw only nine, none from Philadelphia. Advancing to the second round with Catalano were Junot Joyner, 25, of Bowie, Md.; Jose Candelaria, 23, of Bayonne, N.J.; Jonathan Baines, 17, of Smyrna, Del.; Angela Martin, 26, of Chicago; Kristy Lee Cook, 23, of Selma, Ore.; Beth Stalker, 28, of Grand Blanc, Mich.; Brooke White, 24, of Van Nuys, Calif.; and Chris Watson, 20, of Dover, Del.

Cowell told Watson, a self-assured youngster with dreadlocks and a killer smile, that he already looked like a star.

That's not enough.

"I want to be a legend," said Watson, who sang "Follow Me," by Uncle Kracker. "I don't want to be the typical artist. I want to sell more records after I'm dead and gone than when I'm alive."