American Idol - Season 8 (2 Viewers)

[Josh Dial]

She also utterly wrecked Steve Martin's performance. Wrecked as in if his mother were watching, she probably turned to the rerun of NCIS on CBS. There was a busker outside the Calgary zoo this weekend that sounded better than she does even on her "good" nights.

 

[EricSchulz]

Hanson:
I am already dreading the "withdrawal" of not seeing your posts several times a week until next January (that seems SO far away)! Are there any other shows/threads that you regularly contribute to to help ease the pain/reduce the "shakes"?

 

[Patrick Sun]

You should check out the "So You Think You Can Dance" thread for this summer.

 

[Josh Dial]

Agreed. Not only is the show itself better than AI, the threads are better, too!

 

[Michael Allred]

Well yes and no. Rodgers has kept the idea of performing with Queen as a possibility for big shows or charity events.

As for Queen+ Adam Lambert, I don't see it happening. Adam has the Idol tour and his own album to make. Why would he jump into something where he'll constantly face (very) unfavorable comparisons? Rodgers is highly respected, sold millions of albums and HE didn't fare very well, what chance would Lambert have?

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Just returned from vacation to hear the news about Kris.

How the hell did that happen?!

I didn't have the opportunity to see the final week (still on Tivo), but
clearly, Adam was the best contestant ever to appear on American Idol.

How did Kris end up winning this?!

 

[Adam_S]

as I said before, the reason I think Kris won is that Adam peaked on rock week and Kris picked up new fans every single week, peaking on the night of the finale. Adam wasn't as good as his best in the final two competition weeks, so he didn't win.

 

[Bryan X]

I think he was too.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Right, whatever bump in voting fanbase Adam got when Alison got the boot wasn't enough to overcome the bump that Kris got when Danny got the boot.

Plus, it was weird to hear how high the vote totals get from week to week. Were they extending the voting time frame as the weeks wore on? How do you go from votes cast in the mid-30 millions to almost 100 million in 8 or 9 weeks?

 

[Joseph Bolus]

As was pointed out by several reviewers, Kris actually *botched* the last two songs that he sung Tuesday night. Not only was he unable to hit the high notes on "No Boundaries" he also glossed over the words right before the bridge. So this wasn't a singing competition. (Not that it ever is.) But this year we found out that it also wasn't a performance competition, since there is no question as to who provided the best performances on the show week-in-and-week out.

I will say this, though: The judges were so sure that Kris would not have a chance to win after his miserable performance on the last song, that instead of critiquing his performance, they simply congratulated him for making it this far in the competition. I bet that's the last time they make that mistake!

 

[AnthonyC]

I believe in the early weeks voting lasts 2 hours but is bumped to 4 towards the end.

If Kris votes came from people voting against anything, it wasn't Adam; it was the Idol machine. The entire season they blatantly made it clear that Adam (or Danny or Lil before they finally realized she wasn't anything special) was destined to be the winner. Paula flat-out said during multiple critiques that she'd see Adam and Danny in the finals (even when Danny didn't perform up to par, she'd always add something like "But I'll still see you in the finals!"). It didn't happen, but how disrespectful is that to the other 11 contestants to know that the judges see them as cannon fodder? The title's completely irrelevant anyway but obviously it means something considering how many Adam fans are up in arms (and I don't mean anyone here). I didn't end up voting last week but I was strongly considering voting for Kris just to stick it to the producers and their pimping.

 

[EricSchulz]

RE: the Adam Lambert/Queen rumors:

(from Queenzone.com's weekly email updates)

After Adam Lambert’s killer performance with Queen on Wednesday night’s season finale of American Idol, rumors flew that he had already been offered a job singing with the band. That’s slightly premature, according to the band’s guitarist, Brian May. “Amongst all that furor, there wasn’t really a quiet moment to talk,” May tells Rolling Stone in an e-mail interview. “But [drummer Roger Taylor] and I are definitely hoping to have a meaningful conversation with him at some point. It’s not like we, as Queen, would rush into coalescing with another singer just like that. It isn’t that easy. But I’d certainly like to work with Adam. That is one amazing instrument he has there.”

May, whose band recently ended a four-year-long partnership with singer Paul Rodgers, is comfortable with Idol as a launching point for the careers of rock singers. “You’d have to define ‘legitimate’ first,” he writes. “The long-term answer has to be that, if you have enough talent and enough will to succeed, you will get there by whatever route presents itself. Once you have scaled the castle walls, with the sword in your hand, it matters little
how you got there. I’ve not always been positive about shows like this, but there is no doubt that it offers a door to some real genuine talent along the way.”

“Both those boys are well worthy of big success,” May continues, in regard to Lambert and Idol winner Kris Allen. “So it’s pointless for someone like me to stand on the sidelines jeering. I’m confident Adam will make great use of this wonderful opportunity. I hope I’m there to see it.”

 

[Mikah Cerucco]

I don't follow Queen, but I like everything May had to say.

 

[Hanson]

As near as I can figure, the producers have a phone system that can "open the spigot" to allow more calls to be logged, and that system has been online since season 7 (the first season with a blowout final vote). As the weeks go on, they open up capacity so that the vote totals rise steadily week after week. This is all happening as the viewership drops year after year. Had they had the capacity in season 5, they would have easily topped 100 million votes for the top three show.

Also, I am curious as to what the percentage of that 100 million is text votes. The finale may have been a record for text votes.

Note that the vote totals for the top three show are even more impressive -- 84 million votes for a 2 hour voting window shattered the previous mark. Which is why I think that the Gokey votes are overestimated -- if you look at the viewership drop-off for the last two shows, it looks like the Gokey voters tuned out rather than watch Adam win (or so they assumed). I think the Kris voters were just waaay more enthusiastic and organized than the Adam voters, and the underdog status made them even more enthusiastic. The text votes from the little girls were also probably a huge difference maker.

Eric, SYTYCD is a lot of fun and a better talent competition than Idol, but I don't put forth anywhere near the effort for outting together commentaries for that show (or any other show for that matter). But you should definitely check out the show -- it probably has the highest level of talent across the board out of any other TV talent contest. Plus, it appears that being pretty and having a nice bod is almost a prerequiste for dancers, so there's lot of eye-candy in the offing.

 

[Brett_M]

Agreed. Besides DWTS, the hottest young woman on TV are found here. Entertaining and inspiring, too.

 

[Bunk]

Nice

 

[Bryan X]

[qutoe]Also, I am curious as to what the percentage of that 100 million is text votes.[/quote]

Did they also open up text voting to all carriers for the finale? During the season, if you didn't have AT&T as your carrier you couldn't text your vote. But someone on a different carrier told me they were able to text their vote during the finale. Anyone know?

 

[Bunk]

Nice

 

[Jeffery_H]

It's quite simple and one I stated before on how Kris won. Our local Fox station even pointed it out because they had Adam, as most did, picked as the hands down winner. Kris won for one reason only, his demographic was "Tween" girls period. They are a driving force and if you looked at our local Fox you saw all of the Tweens were voting for Kris. The Fox station even said other affiliates were reporting the same thing at their live events for Idol parties.

Kris holds no appeal to anyone out of that age group and most 16 and up, including girls, were going for Adam to win. Kris won because he was cute and the Tweens loved him. Their demographics were quite different between Adam and Kris and the ones that vote the most, the Tweens, are what made him the winner.

In record sells, I think you will see a much better sell through with Adam because the Tweens will have moved on by then or like some other boy idol.

 

[Hanson]

If it was just a tween thing, Archuleta would have won last year instead of losing by 14 million votes. Which means that Kris' appeal extended past the tween demo.

Incidentally, one of the reasons the votes keep creeping up as viewership declines has to be due to autodialers. Nigel Lythgoe confirmed last year that they had never thrown out a vote for violating the "power voting" rule, and now that the horse is out of the barn, I don't know if they really can. I haven't seen estimates, but I wouldn't be shocked if the autodialer vote was 1 out of 4 or higher. Actually, I'd be shocked if it were lower.

Ryan stated in the performance finale that only AT&T callers can text votes, so I doubt that texts were accepted from other carriers. I am not that familiar with texting, but don't they use a special 4-digit AT&T texting code for AI so that it wouldn't be possible for you to send a text vote from another carrier?

"inspiring" indeed ;-)