Comments on: Season Post-Mortem, Part 3: The New New Idol

By: maryannns

maryannns — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:58:43 +0000

Boy do I ever agree with most of the above! I really like Adam and was rooting for him, but I also did not like the blatant pimping. The judges chatter and other silly stuff wastes time that should have been spent on singing. There was a shameful lack of that in the last few weeks compared to other years.

As for Adam being more free because he didn’t sin – not true. He is signed with RCA and 19.

I hope he puts out a record with a variety to music such as we saw on AI, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. But he will not, on the other hand, get to do entirely what he wants, which in his case may be a good thing. If he gets too extreme he will lose the fan base he gained on AI.

By: JamesD

JamesD — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:53:16 +0000

Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting

By: jara

jara — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:38:03 +0000

I agree with the comments regarding producer manipulation, judge pimping, etc. Too little of the show is composed of actual performance. Which is why I TIVO it and watch in 15 minutes, skipping over the fluff and singers I don’t care for. And yes, the stories of power voting probably put off some viewers that figure a vote or two won’t matter in the scheme of things.

But there is another factor in voting that I’ve not seen addressed (in the limited forums I’ve read, that is), and that is that perhaps Finale voting is skewed differently than previous voting. I don’t vote, but if I did, I would have stopped voting for Adam once he hit the Finals. I simply don’t want my favorite to be stuck in the Idol Machine. I don’t think that the restrictions that come with the title are worth it to a truly talented performer with a vision. Adam didn’t need to win to, in all liklihood, become the biggest success of the season. Adam just needed to hang around long enough to get the screen time and build awareness. I think the title is OK for younger performers like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, who at 19 or 20 need the support, structure and guidance to develop a career path. More seasoned performers like Adam, David Cook, and Chris Daughtry just need to build a big enough fan base to get signed. They’re better off going in their own direction at their own than having to put out the “formula” first Idol winner albumon a predetermined schedule. That’s my two cents

By: Renee

Renee — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:34:59 +0000

I have watched every single show of AI since the show Tamyra Grey got kicked off. Since I hadn’t seen any previous shows, it didn’t have a big impact on me, but I was at a friend’s house and she was shocked like most of the rest of the regular audience. Every year since then there have been people eliminated well before their time for whatever reason. The good news is that winning AI doesn’t guarantee success (Taylor Hicks) and losing doesn’t prevent a great career (Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson) That I can deal with. What I find most frustrating is the increasing focus on the judges’ antics and pimping. This hit home even harder last night when I watched “So You Think You Can Dance” for the first time. I was impressed by a couple things – 1. the depth of talent was much greater at this point in the competition, 2. Most of the focus was on the participants’ dancing skills instead of their “drama” and 3. The judges were less focused on themselves and more on the dancers. Their comments were direct, lucid, and productive. How refreshing it was!

I love American Idol – it has become a ritual in our house for the past several years and I would hate to see it go away. I sure wish they would pay attention to their audience’s frustrations and fix the problems that seem to be universally annoying.

By: annie

annie — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:46:19 +0000

The fact that more votes were able to be placed makes comparing the earlier seasons to current ones a non factor. Final results could well have been different, especially in the Ruben/Clay contest, if all votes could have been counted.
The pimping of contestants, the overexposure of contestants like bikini girl and Tatiana, and the unfair grouping of contestants instead of being able to choose the best each week bothered me this year and almost made me lose interest at first. The quality of the final thirteen kept my interest down to the wire.
Producers should produce more singing – longer songs, more songs and better selection of songs to choose. It should be clear to the audience what songs were available so that when the judges say “bad song choice”, we know what they could have chosen. Maybe if there is less judge noise and more music and contestant information, the show will perk up.

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:33:55 +0000

There’s a very simple answer to why the voter totals have gone up and it can be seen by analysing the busy signal data at dialidol. Because the idol phone lines have improved a lot, they’re counting most of the votes. People voting for Bo had 7 non-counted attempts for every 3 counted votes. Even the worst of the idol’s that night only counted 5 of every 10 votes and the rest got busy signals. In season 8 with 5 people, the highest number of busy signals still got more than 9 out of 10 votes counted.

Here are the numbers for the busy percentages from the week with 5 idols from different seasons:

Season 4:
Best: Bo had close to 70% busy signals
Worst: about 50%

Season 5:
Taylor had close to 80% busy signals
Worst: about 50%

Season 6:
Jordin had about 30% busy signals
about 10%

Season 7:
David C had less than 20%
6 or 7%

Season 8:
Lil had 7% busy signals
Worst was less than 2%