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The American Idol formula

by Roberta on May 20th, 2007

American Idol has the formula down for making you want to watch that nonsense. Recently, they sent home Melinda Doolittle, who has a gargantuan amount of talent, in lieu of two younger, less-talented kids, Blake Lewis and Jordin Sparks.

Melinda Doolittle gave it her all on last week’s show and blew them both away, but American Idol can’t turn it’s back on their younger, more popular, audience base: 12-30 year-olds. The 12-year old girls like Blake Lewis and the rest of them think that Jordin Sparks is SO talented. Just shoot me, really let’s get down to the reality of the matter.

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Truth to tell, though, this has not been a good year on the most popular reality TV show in the world, and there are signs that its stranglehold on North American youth is loosening. Early in the season critics complained that Fox Television, which produces and broadcasts the show in the U.S., had sunk to a new low when it aired the embarrassing audition footage of a young man who appeared to be mentally handicapped. This spring, the performance segments used to winnow down the top singers were notable not for the stellar talent but rather for a running battle between the notoriously nasty British judge Simon Cowell and the sweet but musically incompetent Sanjaya Malakar.

You see the formula here? They pick the less talented people to give us that wonderful entertainment of seeing Simon rip them to shreds on national television. We all like the bad guy, so we watch. We watch to see what the Sanjayas are going to do next and what the judges will say. We watch to see how drunk Paula acts and to hear how snarky Simon gets.

Is it centered around real talent? No, it’s centered around who will give Fox the most entertainment bang for their buck.

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POSTED IN: American Idol, Blake Lewis, Jordin Sparks, Melinda Doolittle, Sanjaya Malakar, Simon Cowell