THE odds on “Idol” favor David Cook.
With the long-awaiting David vs. David finale set for tomorrow night, the online gambling sites were heating up over the weekend.
As of yesterday, the oddsmakers were favoring the rocker, David Cook, over the elfish crooner, David Archuleta.
BetCRIS.com makes Archuleta the 2 to 1 underdog (a winning $1 bet returns $3) in tomorrow’s sing-off. Odds that David Cook will win are 1 to 3 (a $3 bet pays $4).
Bodoglife.com gives Archuleta – who was once the gambling site’s pick to take “Idol” top honors – a slightly better chance of winning. But he is still the underdog at 3 to 2.
David Cook is around 2 to 5.
And Bet365.com lists David Cook at a bit higher than 5/2 while young David’s odds are pegged at 1 to 2.
Picking the winner though may not be as simple as betting on the favorite – as any horse player can tell you.
In fact, unless one of the Davids really messes up tomorrow night, the voting could be the closest ever.
An in-depth analysis of “Idol” ratings data by The Nielsen Company, released over the weekend, finds that the audience for the show is not young kids, as some might assume.
The largest portion of the viewers (29 percent) are between 35 and 49 years old, the rating company says.
Slightly more than one in five viewers (22 percent) are younger than 25.
Those stats might favor the older Cook, who is also 25.
But it is the younger viewers who are more likely to vote – and vote lots of times – for their choice.
Text voting, for instance, is getting more common, Nielsen found.
The “average ‘Idol’ participant” texted the show 38 times in April – with women far more likely (by 44 percent) to text-in their votes.
That could be seen as a big plus for the 17-year-old heartthrob, Archuleta.
Regional loyalty to the show tends to be clustered on the East and West seaboards, the analysis discovered.
Some 44 percent of the “Idol” audience lives in the Northeast and Southeast (where the majority of “Idol” winners have been from, incidentally.)
The Pacific coast makes up 19 percent of the audience. But the West and Southwest have the lowest totals.
Archuleta is from Utah – a lower-watching region.
Cook grew up in Missouri and lives in Tulsa, a region that has a slightly higher viewership.
Meanwhile, Nielsen also confirms that overall, the show is losing some of its gas.
In Season 5, “Idol’s” best year, more than 30 million people watched the show each week.
This year, the average audience is 27 million – though it is still No. 1 and miles ahead of where the show started in Season 1.
Back then, an average 12 million watched each show – but, judging from the ratings, must have a told a lot friends about it.