American Idol

Let's talk about American Idol. Its on tonight, right? The buzz in incredible, to the point where MSNBC.com had no less than six different Idol related links on its front page yesterday (not that its surprising to see so much celebrity news on their frontpage, but it left no room for anyone else).

Anyway, I'm not here to just whine and cry and bash American Idol and then go run off to watch Firefly on DVD. Instead I'm going to try and figure out why the show continues to become more popular with each passing year, which to me is still a huge paradox. Only then will I rewards myself with some Firefly.

There are two possible scenarios when it comes to Idol,

1) Old fans stay, new fans join them
2) Old fans leave, enough new fans join to replace them and then some

I think that option 1 is the most likely scenario. Furthermore, I can understand why the show continues to garner new viewers. The average TV viewer is not going to make knee jerk reactions on Idol and trash a show they've never watched (that's what angry nerds like I do). Instead they're going to see a large and constant fanbase behind the show, which is reason enough to convince most people that they will be entertained by it.

What I find so confusing then is why so many of those old fans continue to watch the show. If you're new to it, American Idol is going to have the same charm and mania as it did when it first aired. But for anyone who has followed it from the start, I don't see how they could continue to watch. The show has lost its purpose if you ask me. This is supposed to help create the next idol of pop music. Isn't that someone we're supposed to adore and love for a period of time like no one else? Kelly Clarkson is the only one of the lot that's proven to be a real force in the music biz, and everyone after her has dropped off the radar quicker than the last. I think my father said it best when he described Taylor Hicks as a bad karaoke singer. If all they get is a soul owning recording contract and an album that no one listens to, how the hell can we call them an American Idol? I read one of those msnbc articles, where one of the judges claimed the show will keep rolling on its high as long as they continue to find great talent. I find this a contradiction, because I'm not seeing much talent at all. At least not from the winners; it seems that far better singers have been voted off in past shows.

I've heard one solid theory that doesn't boil down to simply "people are stupid", and that's that once you start with something, you don't want to stop. People tune in first to watch Simon bark at the instant losers, and stay for the rest. Its a reasonable theory that I really like, but American Idol still boggles my mind. I find it incredible how much closer it brings American music to the actual idol system of Japan, which is the pinnacle of spoon fed corporate junk, yet no one seems to notice. I'm amazed at some of the choices the voting public has made on the show, and that's just from watching clips of the losing singers on the morning news.

I hate lumping the American public into the mass of "sheeple" that pseudo-intellectuals throw them into when it comes to just about anything. Not only because I hate pseudo-intellectuals, but also because I know I'm no better than Idol viewers in my obsession with a TV show; I watch 24 like a religion after all. Still, when a program can go on for this long, continuously degrading in quality, and still somehow become more popular, I begin to wonder just what the hell is going on.