‘American Idol’ Finale With Katy Perry Farewell Draws Season 22’s Best Audience

American Idol Season 22 Disney/Eric McCandless

American Idol ended Season 22 on a high note.

The long-running singing competition series bid farewell to judge Katy Perry during Sunday’s finale episode, with an audience of 5.64M tuning in, according to live + same-day data. That was an 8% increase over the week prior to reach a season high in total viewers.

The finale was up fairly significantly versus the Season 22 average, which was around 4.8M viewers per episode on Sunday nights and 4.1M for Monday nights.

It’s the best the series has done since the Season 21 finale, which aired in May of last year. But, this year’s finale was down about a million viewers compared to that episode. The season overall saw about a 500K average viewer decrease compared to Season 21.

Still, American Idol is doing quite well for ABC, as it continues to be one of the network’s most-watched shows. It has little to no unscripted competition on Sundays, and its biggest rival is now CBS’ new series Tracker, which begins airing halfway through Idol.

Apparently, the Season 22 finale was fairly buzzy on social media, as Disney reports the episode managed 2.1M social interactions throughout the night.