American Idol 2013

[Purron]

So, who’s in? Yeah, guess I am against my better judgment. What do you think of the new judges?

[W2R]

Ugh, I am not looking forward to Nicki Minaj as a judge. Hopefully she will be better than I expect.

I will be watching the show either way. I love watching Idol, and have watched it for many years. I would be disappointed if it started going downhill, though.

[KB]

I'm going in with an open mind even though the drama shown already is a turn off. Hopefully the judges can focus on the reason they are there and not their egos. I'm curious about Keith Urban...don't know much about him..

[Ronnieboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R Ugh, I am not looking forward to Nicki Minaj as a judge. Hopefully she will be better than I expect. I will be watching the show either way. I love watching Idol, and have watched it for many years. I would be disappointed if it started going downhill, though.

Ditto

[utrecht]

I would say its already been going downhill. Ratings have dropped every year since Simon left.

[Brdofpray]

Is that on ESPN? I seem to have missed this show.

[bUU]

We'll most likely be watching again this year.

The drama on the judging panel is an essential aspect of the show. We don't know what this year will bring, yet, but just going on the past few years, that aspect of the show has actually been much tamer than in past years. Simon regularly was presented as a real jerk - utterly anti-social - and Paula regularly was presented as a first-class flake. The two of them became little more than cartoon characters, and Randy actually seemed to respond to that by becoming a caricature of himself, just to retain some semblance of presence. These were not good developments.

The fact that the judging panel has been tamer since Simon left reduced the "car wreck" quality of the show (as did the reduction in how many painfully crappy auditions the producers deliberately decided to let through). That's a good thing, in my opinion - a very good thing, even though it did result in lower ratings. I don't watch American Idol for that "car wreck" aspect, and so if fewer of us are watching because they've reduced that aspect, I'm okay with that.

I am a little worried about the choice to put onto the panel, this year, two people who are rumored to hate each other (Minaj and Carey). However, until I see how whatever their relationship really is shows up on camera, I'm not going to worry about it, since it could just be hype (intended to try to rope back in those who liked watching the Simon-driven car wreck). And it is important to have people on the panel who fundamentally disagree about music, so hopefully that's what's going on for real, there. The judges were most boring when they agreed with each other.

The changes in recent years have helped me regain some respect for the judging panel. Randy has toned himself down (though he does insist on mentioning how many years he's been doing this, over and over again). And the panel, in general, in recent years as been presented more like the very early years: Very much as people who care about the talent they're helping gain visibility, more than they care about themselves.

So, overall, I don't think the show has gone downhill in quality. I do think we viewers tend to get bored with things after a while, and so perhaps we've gone downhill. American Idol, very deliberately, starts over each year. And as interesting as some people find digging into the back-stories of a new set of young kids each year, the fact is that they are mostly kids, which limits how much depth there really can be in such stories, and after 11 years of such stories, their stories are generally only notable when they are naturally melodramatic, and that gets old too.

One trend that I think does present a really big challenge to American Idol is the fact that many more types of music are becoming far more mainstream. American Idol used to be a contest between pop singers and country-pop singers, with notable sprinkles of other genres, i.e., the occasional rock-pop singer thrown in, for example. I think that putting Minaj on the panel is a sign that they want rap to be better represented, and putting Urban on the panel is a sign that they don't want to lose their country aspect. Quite frankly, I find all competitions that put different genres up against each other to be silly. And frustrating, because the competition is going to be driven more so by how much of the audience likes a particular genre over another, rather than by how talented each competitor is. I know there's no way around that no matter what - in the end, it is a popularity contest - but I think the necessary fiction that they're searching for the best of the best would be better served by narrowing to one genre. While pop and pop-country (and rock-pop) are close enough to ignore that aspect, add in rap and hip-hop and other genres previously not prominent on American Idol and it gets a lot harder to overlook the problem.

[Purron]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brdofpray Is that on ESPN? I seem to have missed this show.

What's ESPN?

[obgyn65]

Am I the only one who has never watched the American Idol show ? :-)

[bUU]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Purron What's ESPN?

Indeed. One of the great things about television in recent years is how it has grown to offer enough of so many different interest that we no longer all have to watch the same things anymore. I laugh when I hear some people boast (yup - it sounds just like boasting) that today's shows can't beat the ratings of shows. (Only three of the 40 most watched television broadcasts were from the last eighteen years.) What they see as some kind of endorsement of television "from the old days" I see as a condemnation. The reality is that we're in the actual "Golden Age of Television". Television no longer has to be so badly watered down as to be amenable to 40-50 million people. A television broadcast these days can appeal to 10 million people and still be considered highly successful, and therefore can be much more specific to a certain audience, and therefore excel with regard to what that more concentrated audience is seeking.

It shouldn't be lost on us that the three most recent broadcasts on the list of those most watched were all Super Bowls. The point is that not even sports draws in a broad and consistent following: Rather, like people who go to church only on holidays, sports only draws a notable following once a year or so.

And that's okay. Sports fans have their options. Drama fans have their options. Comedy fans have their options. And even within these categories, people can have even more specific preferences satisfied by very high quality offerings, which simply was not possible even as recently as twenty years ago because because television simply didn't have the bandwidth to satisfy all those different preferences with quality offerings.

[Incidentally, the last non-sports programming that conceptually "we all sat down together to watch" was the series finale of Cheers, just about twenty years ago. Seinfeld gets an honorable mention - perhaps one last gasp of breath of the concept that everyone in the country would enjoy the same program.]

Quote:

Originally Posted by obgyn65 Am I the only one who has never watched the American Idol show ? :-)

Surely not, and given what I wrote above, that's okay.

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R Ugh, I am not looking forward to Nicki Minaj as a judge. Hopefully she will be better than I expect. I will be watching the show either way. I love watching Idol, and have watched it for many years. I would be disappointed if it started going downhill, though.

+1

[rbmrtn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by obgyn65 Am I the only one who has never watched the American Idol show ? :-)

Nope.

[eytonxav]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R Ugh, I am not looking forward to Nicki Minaj as a judge. Hopefully she will be better than I expect. I will be watching the show either way. I love watching Idol, and have watched it for many years. I would be disappointed if it started going downhill, though.

+3 sums up my viewpoint exactly

[eytonxav]

Quote:

Originally Posted by obgyn65 Am I the only one who has never watched the American Idol show ? :-)

Hey, you mentioned this last season, so I think you owe it to yourself to watch a show or two or.....

[Purron]

While we're waiting for the new season, share some of your favorite Idol performances so obgyn65 and others know what the show's about.

Bo Bice Sings "In A Dream" - YouTube

[W2R]

This is an old one, but one of my favorites. She didn't even make the finals! There is a great example of the Siobhan scream that people either loved or hated, at 1:17.

American Idol Siobhan Magnus Think - YouTube

And then there is this one, which is so touching! This performance was soon after the death of Whitney Houston.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9__SBFmelfc

[Purron]

One for you W2R. Love this girl!

American Idol Haley Reinhart House Of The Rising Sun AI10 Top5 720p - YouTube

[W2R]

I'd forgotten about Haley Reinhart! She was a great contestant. Nice song, too.

[Purron]

Quote:

Originally Posted by W2R I'd forgotten about Haley Reinhart! She was a great contestant. Nice song, too.

DH and I loved her. Great voice, cute as a bug and just the right amount of sass.

[aaronc879]

I watched AI for the first 9 seasons but then I got rid of my TV. They don't offer full episodes on Hulu or the FOX Network.com so I can't watch it any more. I think they have clips on You Tube but I want full episodes online. Probably the show I miss the most.