American Idol - Has It Run Its Course? If so, Why?

Good article, Dr Know, with excellent reasons for the decline.

But from another angle entirely, American Idol is like all the other TV programmes: it's novelty has now worn off and the audience are getting tired. No rocket science there. People soon get tired of the same thing, no matter how good it is supposed to be, especially if it comes at them relentlessly. American Idol's fall was thus inevitable. Simply a matter of 'when'.

The best programmes come for a few seasons and finish, leaving the audience with fond memories and wanting more, not boring them to death with predictable fare.

Keep the judges vote as part of the process

I think last year's Sanjaya escapade proved that the voting system is flawed.

I watched only a few parts of it, never a whole show. I thnk it should end but I think it will go on 2 more years.

Personally I think it's just stale. It's the same set up every season, and the musical output of the winners is essentially the same top 40 pop music. Only 2 winners have gone on to have award-winning musical careers and become "idols." I'm not a fan of the show so I'm sure that's a bias on my part, but it just seems to me that it's the 21st century Gong Show.

There are two points that you raise, however, that make me think the show will go on, perhaps longer than anyone wants. The first is

we do not reward the good news, we only crave the bad. The producers gave us what we show we want, even though we 'protest' that it should not happen.

It's a guilty pleasure. I'm sure all of us think we're good at something that we really aren't, so we respect the people that stand up in front of the judges, especially the ones that are horrible. But, we also love to watch a train wreck (not literally, hopefully) - we love to see people that are so horrendously bad that even they should know it, but they don't, and we love to see their ego taken down a peg.

The other point,

Idol has lasted long enough, that many have 'graduated' from the key demographic. This group is also the 'instant gratification' group. If you cannot grab them immediately, the remote will have them gone. This makes the key Idol audience a fickle group.

While people are "graduating" from this group all the time, there's a large group (perhaps equal, perhaps larger) that is just going into its "first day of school," if you will. There's a constantly-rotating group of fans, and since media coverage stays high (if it doesn't grow) there's always more people to bring into the fold to make up for the ones that were lost. If nothing else, it's the simple fact that for every person that gets "too old" for it, there's at least one other that has a birthday and is just the right age for that demographic, or is moving within that demographic.

Personally, I don't like reality TV unless it's of the so-bad-it's-entertaining sort (like Flavor of Love, which I thought was hilarious). This past season I got into Kitchen Nightmares, and then found the BBC version, which was much better. I think American Idol had (and maybe still has) a good mix of something that's universal (music) and something that we, as Americans, view as inherent - encoded in our DNA, almost - which is voting.

what about carrie underwood? her career is comparable to kelly clarkson...how quickly we forget...just because kelly is/was in the 'pop' world...she is on her way to the country!

The best fix for a truly bad voting system would be that instead of voting for the one you want to stay is to vote for the one you want eliminated from the competition, at least until the Final Three. That way, the "Vote for the worse Bunch" would have to spend a lot more time and effort trying to keep a "Sanjaya" or worse in the running.

Great talent falls to early simply because the good vote is scattered among good talent while "The Worse" get the Block Vote. This is a simple solution that would most likely mean MORE VOTES, not less.

This could be the absolute best show ever on television and last a lot longer if it were not for the fact that GOOD TALENT is at a severe disadvantage in the final twenty or before.

My contention is that unless American Idol recognizes this, it is doomed on it's own merits.

The best fix for a truly bad voting system would be that instead of voting for the one you want to stay is to vote for the one you want eliminated from the competition, at least until the Final Three. That way, the "Vote for the worse Bunch" would have to spend a lot more time and effort trying to keep a "Sanjaya" or worse in the running.

Great talent falls to early simply because the good vote is scattered among good talent while "The Worse" get the Block Vote. This is a simple solution that would most likely mean MORE VOTES, not less.

This could be the absolute best show ever on television and last a lot longer if it were not for the fact that GOOD TALENT is at a severe disadvantage in the final twenty or before.

My contention is that unless American Idol recognizes this, it is doomed on it's own merits.

Could this article be any duller??? My god, I thought I was gonna pass out from boredom! A couple of decent points were made in it; unfortunately they were buried beneath the overwhelming leaden prose. This is the written equivalent to listening to Ben Stein, the mono-tone teacher from Ferris Bueller, read the instructions to a vacuum cleaner.

I think another point that needs to be brought up about Season 7 is that it (along with the writer's strike) has pushed FOX's best show back week after week. I'm, of course, referring to House. House is, in my humble opinion, the best thing to hit TV since the original CSI, and yet FOX, the producers, maybe even Americans in general, have decided they would rather air a couple hours of horrifyingly bad reality TV instead of a drama that has helped drag FOX out of the ratings gutter against giants such as ABC, NBC and even CBS. Its not only bad business, it's just not fair to the average American viewer. AI is not allowed on in my house, nor is FOX, except on nights that new episodes of House are on. It's a small, insignificant protest, but it makes me feel better about myself, all the same.

Idol is back and better than ever, it has joined the ranks of the "office pool" where employees can't wait for Thursday to see where they stand in relation to their fellow competitors. My own office runs "idolmaker" complete with gaudy ugly trophy for the winner!

I agree there should be more singing, less background story and maybe a live 2 week mini contest for a wildcard berth for some maybes.

You made some good points in the article, but you failed to mention two other factors. One is that at the same time the demographic is getting older and graduating from 'I'll buy any crap that comes along', they're now starting to say 'I want an artist that matters to me years from now', and it's not what AI or the current music industry wants to give. They want product. The older the music listener gets the more they want good songs and good performers and people who won't fit into the music industry's shiny little boxes so they don't want to promote them. Taylor Hicks is a prime example--anyone who's ever seen him live knows he is a Soul/R&B/Blues musician who cut his teeth on Otis Redding and Ray Charles, not Justin Timberlake. And his self-penned songs are miles ahead of the pop poo the AI record label tried to foist on the public on the CD they released for him. When they realized he wasn't a little pop prince they didn't want to promote him, and when he'd put his foot down and insist on not singing crap and being portrayed as Justin Part II. they labelled him difficult and didn't want to work with him.

Point #2 is related to the last statement--AI is declining because TPTB have a unique ability to completely tick off its audiences and not care about the consequences in the long run, because well they've been #1 for so long. But first you tick off the Claymates, then you tick off the ones who loved Constantine, then you tick off Daughtry fans, all with questionable voting. Now you want to come down on Kelly because she dared to release a more mature CD than what her bubblegum appeal's been giving you, you come down on Reuben because he chooses to release gospel records, and you don't even do Taylor the courtesy of having him appear on the opening to your show because you want to convince the world it was a mistake? GUESS WHAT, THE FANS OF THOSE PEOPLE AREN'T GOING TO WATCH YOUR SHOW OR BUY YOUR PRODUCT!! If their ratings really are in decline, they've only done it to themselves.

Fox has a habit of canceling good and/or popular shows (Firefly, Arrested Development, Family Guy, and Futurama are the ones that come to mind) and replacing them with shows like Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader (which should have been transformed into a reality show about the Fox network called Are You $(%ing Serious!?)

...uhm, because you can watch three and a half minutes of it twice a year on YouTube and find out who the new Kelly or Rueben is.

"Taylor Hicks is a prime example--anyone who's ever seen him live knows he is a Soul/R&B/Blues musician who cut his teeth on Otis Redding and Ray Charles, not Justin Timberlake. And his self-penned songs are miles ahead of the pop poo the AI record label tried to foist on the public on the CD they released for him. When they realized he wasn't a little pop prince they didn't want to promote him, and when he'd put his foot down and insist on not singing crap and being portrayed as Justin Part II. they labelled him difficult and didn't want to work with him."

True that the label dropped him - but there are plenty of talented Soul/R&B/Blues musicians that don't have any trouble establishing a fan base. The problem with Taylor Hicks is that he's just not enjoyable to listen to, because his singing is so abrasive. His antics on stage were entertaining, but I couldn't stand to have his voice coming through my speakers. Fantasia has managed to find her way through gospel and the stage because she has such power and a depth to her that I think is necessary to do justice to soul music. I do think if the judges had a vote they could have kept him from winning that season and making younger people feel like their middle-aged parents took over the show.

Loving newsvine by the way - I got here for the first time today through MSN. AI in general will definitely have run its course in the next couple years.

Give it the hook.

Give it the hook.