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American Idol · 05/14/08 08:34 PM by Michael Caldwell
I have a couple beefs with American Idol. I am hooked on it (thanks to my wife) and it is quite an entertaining show. However, it is often spoken of as a singing competition when in reality I don’t believe that it is. I find it to be more of a popularity contest which happens to include singing. If singing were the ultimate goal, the people in the finals would be completely different. Don’t get me wrong, there are amazing singers in the competition. Regardless, the competition is rather about charisma and the ability to sell records or make money which is the bottom line. American Idol is looking for a pop star, a performer, someone that people like to listen to. The people with the most trained voices and most ability to sing or write songs won’t necessarily be chosen because perhaps they aren’t good-looking enough, or don’t present themselves well on stage. So, this competition is a good way of finding a well rounded individual who can perform and be liked by his or her audience. Fair enough, really.
The other thing that I find worry-some is the method of voting. How many times have you tried to vote and not been able to get through? For myself, 9 out of 10 times this has occurred. Why are the calls getting rejected? Because the telephone lines are saturated. With over 50 million votes placed in a time period of 2 hours, that means that American Idol receives nearly 7,000 votes every second. Granted, not all the votes are cast by telephone, but, you get the picture. They can only take a finite number of calls at a time over the given period. In the end, there is a bottle-neck for votes, and because they can only come in at a given rate it means that the contestant with the most people attempting to call in their vote won’t increase faster than another contestant’s, just as long as they have enough people calling to saturate the lines. The result? Very close numbers. Close enough to fudge numbers? I think so! But, who knows?!
So, all-in-all, it’s a fun show to watch, but I question the legitimacy of the competition. Oh well. I’m going to keep watching! :)
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