Fox socked away about $40 million for Wednesday night’s “American Idol” finale, according to industry estimates.
Fox charged $1 million for each 30-second spot in the two-hour finale – up from the $700,000 it was charging for the weeks leading up to the finale.
That, in turn, was up from the $400,000 Fox was charging for a 30-second spot when “Idol” first kicked off in January.
By comparison, CBS charged about $2.3 million for a 30-second spot on this year’s Super Bowl.
Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post.
Analyst Bill Carroll of Katz Television Group told Bloomberg News that he had based the $40 million figure on the “conservative” assumption that Fox sold about 10 minutes of network ad time for each hour of the two-hour finale.
“Are they going to be able to maintain what they’ve been able to do with ‘American Idol’? No,” Carroll told Bloomberg.
However, he added, “They have some interesting projects that may turn out to be successful.”
Wednesday’s “Idol” finale pulled superstar numbers as Fantasia Barrino defeated Diana DeGarmo at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood – reportedly by a 1 percent margin of the 60 million-plus votes cast by viewers.
The finale averaged 31.4 million viewers from 8:38 to 10:02 p.m., according to Nielsen numbers.
That’s down from the 33.7 million viewers who saw Ruben Studdard win last year’s “Idol” contest in a close battle with Clay Aiken.
Still, Wednesday’s finale was the fifth-highest-rated entertainment special in Fox history in terms of total viewers.
The third season of “American Idol” was rocked by controversy, including the elimination of critical favorites Jennifer Hudson and La Toya London.
That only made the drama on Wednesday’s finale even stronger – leading Fox to its third-highest-rated nightly average ever (excluding sporting events) among adults 18-49 and total viewers (behind the “Joe Millionaire” finale and last year’s “American Idol” finale).
Ratings for this season of “Idol” were up 16 percent over last year, rising to 25.2 million viewers from 21.7 million viewers.
“Idol”-ized
Wednesday night’s “American Idol” finale brought in an eye-popping $40M in ad revenue for broadcaster Fox.
How that stacks up against other big nights this year:
Super Bowl: $143M
Oscars: $100M
“Friends” finale: $40M
“Apprentice” episodes: $12M
“Survivor: All Stars” finale: $9.8M