Keith Oberman was going on and on last night how Idol took an 11 percent dip in their rating numbers this season.
His points were:
Nothing else on opposite it.
2 Writers strike mean no original competition.
Cold weather should have kept people in front of the tube.
His implication was that the dip was an indication that Idol had pretty much jumped the shark. He seemed very happy at the fact as he saw it.
He went as far as to suggest that this sounded the death knell for all “Reality Show” competition shows. Honestly I have never seen an entire American Idol, but don’t really see this as that significant.
Last season’s ratings were down, so if this season’s premiere is down from that, then yeah, that’s pretty significant. Given the lack of quality competition, it’s a very bad omen.
I don’t watch it, but don’t they start each season with a bunch of crap contestants, basically like a gag reel? I’ve heard from my sister, BIL and both parents that they do this, and that they all hate it. Something about it getting old or being repetitive after the first few seasons. If that’s true, maybe the ratings dip is just a percentage of the core audience waiting until the better talent shows up.
ETA: Then again, the fact that the AI winners keep getting dropped from their labels isn’t very encouraging either.
Well, to keep it in perspective, its viewership was still higher than that for CBS, NBC, ABC and the CW combined. It was inevitable that it would start to get old at some point, but I think it still has a while to go before its doomed.
I thinkm folks are getting tired of these audition shows. First of all, ther is too many of them, secondly I think they make some people uncomfortable, thirdly it just isn’t as interesting when they first did the auditions, and fourthly I think it is obvious that a lof othe people are just trying to be on TV.
Well all I can say is it’s about time! In my opinion American Idol is complete crap and symbolizes everything that is wrong with today’s music.
Lets weed through 20,000 contestants and find the best singer to belt out mediocre pop slop music. These people don’t have any talent!
Now if you look at the “Rock Star” series, this was a far and away better musical experience. Say what you will about what the winner got out of the deal (INXS’ tour was pretty well received, but Supernova’s wasn’t so much) but damn everybody on this show had talent!
More than once they were given a guitar and told to write a song and perform it. How many American Idol winners could even comprehend a challenge of this magnitude?
I’m sorry I’m venting but I despise American Idol and can’t wait for it to never return to the airwaves…
Well, it’s certainly getting better ratings than Keith Olbermann…
Only two of them, out of seven, Taylor and Ruben. Alternately, Dauhgtry, who didn’t even win, had one of the highest selling albums of the past year, I believe, and Carrie Underwood is basically the queen of country right now, so it’s hard to say that it’s not still churning out hits.
I don’t watch it, but my wife does, and I had to hear her shrieks of laughter and horror coming from the living room the last few days while she watched the auditions. I don’t even like American Idol, but it’s silly to say that it’s anything other than the juggernaut that it is.
The inviolable rock-bottom-plus-one format. NOTHING good has come of this.
If you don’t do what the judges on Dancing With The Stars want, at minimum you have one foot out the door. If you don’t do what the judges on AI want, well, you have three annoyed judges, who’ll probably be even more annoyed when you make it to the next round in a landslide. About of a third of the show devoted to opinions that mean jack squat.
Lame prizes. The music contract was a joke from day 1, and for more than 3 months of hard competition against literally hundreds of opponents, even a car isn’t much of a payoff. The standard set by Survivor was a million dollars. AI should have something comparable. A new house! A guaranteed multi-year contract! Fox network stock! A grand prize that’s actually worthy of the term.
Bland, bland, bland, mainstream, mainstream. When a show’s idea of “edgy” or “hard” is Nickel-freakin’-back, it has no edge or hardness. Can we at least have a bit of variety…italo disco, big beat, jazz electro, early alternative, trance, something like that?
In all honesty, though, I don’t think any of this has anything to do with the ratings slide. IMO, the problem is that, for the most part, there simply isn’t much reason to care. I mean, the heck with Reuben Studdard (the poster boy for post-AI flops), where’s Fantasia Barrino? Elliot Yamin? Bo Bice? Taylor Hicks? Gloria or Eleanor or whoever the heck won the last one before Hicks? We’ve had one mainstream megastar (Kelly Clarkson), one niche megastar (Carrie Underwood), one surprise success story (Clay Aiken), and one aspiring rocker breakout (Chris Daughtry). Four big successes out of all the winners, runners-up, and valiant also-rans. (Oh yeah, Jennifer Hudson’s Oscar, don’t forget that.) Finding tomorrow’s stars is supposed to be the whole purpose of this show, not an occasional lucky coincidence. It doesn’t help that the winner very often isn’t the most successful…what’s the dang point in winning at all, then?
Y’know what, I think what woud help this show the most would be if it stopped taking itself so dang seriously. Make it a straight-up singing competition with a nice big prize at the end. Let the contestants pick whatever they want without any concerns about future saleability or image. Kick out only the most extreme worst-of-the-worst cases. Bring in judges who are just happy to be on TV and aren’t afraid to ham it up a bit (lord, if I hear “a little pitchy” or “cabaret” one more time…).
Forget about The Next Whitney Houston and start having some fun. Then the viewers will come back in droves (including me).
P.S.: I never did figure out what was so annoying about “Seacrest out”.
P.P.S.: Um, not to burst anyone’s brain cells, but if Keith Olbermann cared about ratings, why the hell would he have left ESPN? (And as a Sportscenter anchor at that.)