Bram Cohen (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bramcohen) wrote,@ 2008-05-14 06:15:00 |
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American Idol
The technique for building tension on American Idol is an interesting one. Rather than tell you who came out on top each week, they instead tell you who came out on the bottom, giving the impression that it's an active competition which anyone can win. The truth is quite a bit more boring. If you look at the previous season eliminations, in four of the six seasons the eventual winner was never in the bottom group, and the earliest the eventual winner was in the bottom group was in the sixth show. So the show could instead knock out a third of the top 12 on the very first show, and probably not have changed the eventual result in any of the contests thus far. Chances are that in most seasons the eventual winner starts getting the most votes early and stays that way every episode.
Does this mean that American Idol would do a better job of picking the winner if it had stayed with the format of the first few seasons, where votes were used to advance competitors through to the finals? Probably, but there's a distinct lack of any criterion with which to measure 'better'. Yes, votes are more representative of later votes than the judge's judgment, and if the pool of people is bigger there's a greatly reduced chance that there won't be any decent competitors in it (as happened in season six, yeesh), but the only measure available for determining how accurate voting was is later album sales, and those have some very wacky things going on.
Looking at the American Idol top sellers one thing stands out: in most of the seasons, exactly one finalist sold over a million albums, with a big gap below that. The exceptions are season 2, which had two, and season 6, which had none (see aforementioned observation about complete lack of talent in season 6). Apparently the show's producers pick exactly one singer to put some real marketing muscle behind each season, and let the others sell however many they happen to sell. The other thing which stands out is that with the exception of Kelly Clarkson, the first season winner, not a single top seller has sold more than half as many copies of their second album as their first, strongly implying that almost all of their sales are due to Idol-related publicity, with complete failure to build a fanbase on their singing merits alone.
Clarkson was the huge exception to that rule. She sold more than twice as many copies of her second album as her first. My guess is that had American Idol not lucked out with Clarkson in the first season, it would be viewed as having no legitimacy as a source of new talent whatsoever.
The technique for building tension on American Idol is an interesting one. Rather than tell you who came out on top each week, they instead tell you who came out on the bottom, giving the impression that it's an active competition which anyone can win. The truth is quite a bit more boring. If you look at the previous season eliminations, in four of the six seasons the eventual winner was never in the bottom group, and the earliest the eventual winner was in the bottom group was in the sixth show. So the show could instead knock out a third of the top 12 on the very first show, and probably not have changed the eventual result in any of the contests thus far. Chances are that in most seasons the eventual winner starts getting the most votes early and stays that way every episode.
Does this mean that American Idol would do a better job of picking the winner if it had stayed with the format of the first few seasons, where votes were used to advance competitors through to the finals? Probably, but there's a distinct lack of any criterion with which to measure 'better'. Yes, votes are more representative of later votes than the judge's judgment, and if the pool of people is bigger there's a greatly reduced chance that there won't be any decent competitors in it (as happened in season six, yeesh), but the only measure available for determining how accurate voting was is later album sales, and those have some very wacky things going on.
Looking at the American Idol top sellers one thing stands out: in most of the seasons, exactly one finalist sold over a million albums, with a big gap below that. The exceptions are season 2, which had two, and season 6, which had none (see aforementioned observation about complete lack of talent in season 6). Apparently the show's producers pick exactly one singer to put some real marketing muscle behind each season, and let the others sell however many they happen to sell. The other thing which stands out is that with the exception of Kelly Clarkson, the first season winner, not a single top seller has sold more than half as many copies of their second album as their first, strongly implying that almost all of their sales are due to Idol-related publicity, with complete failure to build a fanbase on their singing merits alone.
Clarkson was the huge exception to that rule. She sold more than twice as many copies of her second album as her first. My guess is that had American Idol not lucked out with Clarkson in the first season, it would be viewed as having no legitimacy as a source of new talent whatsoever.
