Monday, July 23, 2007

Fox double-dip

From the tour blog: the Fox execs speak, and Nigel Lythgoe admits that "American Idol" ignored its own contestants this season.
Posted by Alan Sepinwall at 1:35 PM
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8 comments:

dark tyler said...

Actually what Lythgoe says when comparing his two shows, are my exact thoughts while watching (for the first time) "So You Think You Can Dance". Which I find, I have to add, way better than "Idol", because, first of all, you'll find no Sanjayas or Haleys in there. If Lythgoe thinks that he's found a way to help audiences connect with the truly talented people, instead of having to go out of his way to create Sanjaya-like magnets, that'd be a huge step for "Idol".

2:25 PM, July 23, 2007
Anonymous said...

Exactly, dark tyler. It's not so much that they focused on the mentors, but by allowing Sanjaya in and suck up most of the publicity, the other contestants were lost. And by the time Sanjay was voted off, it was too late to connect to those who were left.

Less Sanjaya, more talent would be wonderful on AI.

2:58 PM, July 23, 2007
Alan Sepinwall said...

But they've had Sanjayas every year, Jenn. I really think the problem was the mentor clips basically replacing the biographical clips, so we never really got to know or care about any of the contestants.

3:01 PM, July 23, 2007
Anonymous said...

I guess. Sanjaya just seemed more pronounced this year to me. I still don't think the biographical clips would have helped Melinda. I was in her corned until her trip home. She was the most yawn-inducing of the final three. She had the pipes, but lost out in the personality.

3:28 PM, July 23, 2007
Alan Sepinwall said...

I'm not saying it would have changed the outcome, but I might have felt more invested in either Jordin or Blake if they had gotten more screentime away from the mentors.

3:34 PM, July 23, 2007
Alan Sepinwall said...

BTW, Lythgoe actually boasted that SYTYCD has no Sanjayas of its own, but when someone asked whether that was good or bad, he said,

"Listen, I'm not going to knock Sanjaya. I think Sanjaya helped the last season very well when we were sort of going down and everyone's going, "Oh, the talent's not as good this year." Sanjaya came through for us. No one needs to alter their hair on this program for any reason."

3:38 PM, July 23, 2007
dark tyler said...

So basically he just admits that Sanjaya was there to throw at the audience who didn't think that there was enough talent this year.

It's true SYTYCD doesn't need a Sanjaya because there's real talent, but on the other hand the expectations are not quite the same of the two shows. It's easier to be good when 30 million people aren't expected to show up every time.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if the SYTYCD model can be implemented on "Idol". Again, that is, because that's how they were going for the first 3 or 4 years, and there still were crappy singers in the top 10.

4:25 PM, July 23, 2007
Anonymous said...

but I might have felt more invested in either Jordin or Blake if they had gotten more screentime away from the mentors. I completely agree with you there.

4:27 PM, July 23, 2007

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