What did break American Idol?
Sep. 10th, 2008 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhOne of the things I unearthed in looking over some back Idolator posts was Chris Molanphy's theory that Taylor Hicks broke American Idol and Maura Johnston's hope that David Cook fixed it.
Now, it's no secret that I absolutely, fundamentally hated Taylor Hicks. I think he's a hack, musically, and I think he "gamed" the show: he figured out what his fan-voters liked, pandered to them outrageously, and won. Simon was furious that whole season and while Randy liked him, he also felt Taylor wasn't working up to his potential, which of course he wasn't.
I agree with Molanphy that Taylor represents the moment when the tv-show Idol broke from its looking-for-a-star conceit. Even Fantasia sold more copies of her first record and had a single that did reasonably well, and everyone knew that getting her on the radio/MTV/BET was going to be a tricky sell. And I also agree that Taylor's win may have pushed some younger viewers away from the show. But in a sense, Taylor's win happened because of the huge ratings for AI5.
It's pretty clear that Taylor appealed to people who don't buy music. He definitely zeroed in on the pre-hip hop frat boy crowd, the guys who go out and listen to bar bands playing Doobie Brothers covers, the Jimmy Buffet fans. Guys not unlike my brother. And let me tell you, men 35-54 were not watching a lot of Idol unless their kids made them. (See Obama, Barack.) But Taylor was their kind of singer, and they actually voted for him, and sent him to the top, and in doing so swelled the AI ratings by adding a demo they weren't reaching before. And then they didn't buy his record, because they don't buy records, nor do they listen to radio stations that play new music--they listen to album-oriented rock and classic rock and those ipod-based stations with male names like "Jack FM" or "Adam radio".
So Taylor reveals the inherent flaw in Idol, one that Nigel literally does not know how to fix: you can't get gigantic ratings by finding a relavant pop star. You just can't, because there are big groups of people who will never care about pop music, particularly not-young men. Nigel, as we see on SYTYCD, is showman. He wants to make entertaining television. It's Simon who wants the show to have relevance and credibility, but Simon isn't a producer.
AI6 was a sort of overswing, a corrective, where the show went violently young (Jordin) and violently "new" (Blake), so new that there's no radio format that can contain it (Blake Lewis, meet Kenna). Jordin, otoh, is really the perfect Idol in that there's no way she could have become a pop star without it, simply because of the way she looks. Johnston posits that bringing the instruments in helped AI7, and I think it's up in the air whether D Cook could have won without being able to stand with his guitar looking like a rocker. Certainly the massive disconnect between the home audience and the judges for the finale was partly about the judges seeing what they expected to win--Archuleta belting out the power ballads and looking cute generally--and partly about D Cook selling better in close up than in a room that isn't a very good concert hall and was lit for television. But the voters came through, and continue to come through, and D Cook got a lot of people watching who gave up after Taylor, and who do buy records.
So? Will AI8 really be better? Is the correction in? Will we have more "ringers" this season?
PS: Today on the subway platform there was a guy singing "Hello" with a keyboard and I thought "you know, that's D Cook's song." And when I get home tonight I'm going to have to listen to his version to get the crappy Lionel Richie-is-your-Cosbyesque-stalker version out of my damn head.
Now, it's no secret that I absolutely, fundamentally hated Taylor Hicks. I think he's a hack, musically, and I think he "gamed" the show: he figured out what his fan-voters liked, pandered to them outrageously, and won. Simon was furious that whole season and while Randy liked him, he also felt Taylor wasn't working up to his potential, which of course he wasn't.
I agree with Molanphy that Taylor represents the moment when the tv-show Idol broke from its looking-for-a-star conceit. Even Fantasia sold more copies of her first record and had a single that did reasonably well, and everyone knew that getting her on the radio/MTV/BET was going to be a tricky sell. And I also agree that Taylor's win may have pushed some younger viewers away from the show. But in a sense, Taylor's win happened because of the huge ratings for AI5.
It's pretty clear that Taylor appealed to people who don't buy music. He definitely zeroed in on the pre-hip hop frat boy crowd, the guys who go out and listen to bar bands playing Doobie Brothers covers, the Jimmy Buffet fans. Guys not unlike my brother. And let me tell you, men 35-54 were not watching a lot of Idol unless their kids made them. (See Obama, Barack.) But Taylor was their kind of singer, and they actually voted for him, and sent him to the top, and in doing so swelled the AI ratings by adding a demo they weren't reaching before. And then they didn't buy his record, because they don't buy records, nor do they listen to radio stations that play new music--they listen to album-oriented rock and classic rock and those ipod-based stations with male names like "Jack FM" or "Adam radio".
So Taylor reveals the inherent flaw in Idol, one that Nigel literally does not know how to fix: you can't get gigantic ratings by finding a relavant pop star. You just can't, because there are big groups of people who will never care about pop music, particularly not-young men. Nigel, as we see on SYTYCD, is showman. He wants to make entertaining television. It's Simon who wants the show to have relevance and credibility, but Simon isn't a producer.
AI6 was a sort of overswing, a corrective, where the show went violently young (Jordin) and violently "new" (Blake), so new that there's no radio format that can contain it (Blake Lewis, meet Kenna). Jordin, otoh, is really the perfect Idol in that there's no way she could have become a pop star without it, simply because of the way she looks. Johnston posits that bringing the instruments in helped AI7, and I think it's up in the air whether D Cook could have won without being able to stand with his guitar looking like a rocker. Certainly the massive disconnect between the home audience and the judges for the finale was partly about the judges seeing what they expected to win--Archuleta belting out the power ballads and looking cute generally--and partly about D Cook selling better in close up than in a room that isn't a very good concert hall and was lit for television. But the voters came through, and continue to come through, and D Cook got a lot of people watching who gave up after Taylor, and who do buy records.
So? Will AI8 really be better? Is the correction in? Will we have more "ringers" this season?
PS: Today on the subway platform there was a guy singing "Hello" with a keyboard and I thought "you know, that's D Cook's song." And when I get home tonight I'm going to have to listen to his version to get the crappy Lionel Richie-is-your-Cosbyesque-stalker version out of my damn head.
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Date: 2008-09-10 10:28 pm (UTC)As for David saving it? I don't know about that, part of me feels that Season 7 may have been the pinnacle (at least as far as popularity and what the show has to offer that's new to the business, not necessarily ratings) and that from here it may only continue to drop off. I could be wrong and I certainly have no basis for this reasoning, it's just a feeling that I have. I think David's win proved more about the intelligence of the Idol-watching audience than anything else...and if that forces them to reconfigure and make life more interesting, then that is not an entirely bad thing at all :)
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Date: 2008-09-11 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-11 01:15 am (UTC)That said, I don't think David saved anything. I found this past season boring, contestant-wise.
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Date: 2008-09-11 01:34 am (UTC)The thing I'm left with after reading all of the comments is: omg some of those people really LOVED Taylor Hicks. "Incredible"? Really? And this might be why I just don't get AI, because the whole thing feels ridiculous and manufactured to me and although I know that this is supposed to be a young, poppy show, it's always felt so old-fashioned to me. I hear what you're saying about how T.H. was the guy who aged the show, but to me it's always felt too much like Star Search, which in my head is so firmly tied to middle school.