Idolator
Today's New York Post had a bit of NewsCorp synergy in its pages (Wall Street Journal reporters, take note!) in the form of a preview of the forthcoming American Idol, which clearly won't begin soon enough for the suits at Fox. After last season's slightly lackluster ratings, the powers that be say that they are ready to tinker with the format, and are hoping that some of the contestants will wow them with their instrumental prowess in addition to their pipes:
Several changes are in the works, officials say, including:
* changing the format to let singers show other musical talents, such as guitar playing.
* many fewer "mentors," those established musical stars like Diana Ross and Tony Bennett, who appeared every week last season and took attention away from the contestants.
* and next summer, the annual "Idol" live tour may be combined with the "So You Think You Can Dance" tour - to create a show with both singing and dancing.
That last bit is probably not much of a surprise given the crappy sales of the tour this summer—and the "mentors" quickly got old, especially as more and more of them revealed that they couldn't really sing—but the most intriguing change is the one allowing people to bring instruments onstage, since this could skew the playing field in favor of more instrumental-friendly genres like rock and country. Although part of me is suspicious that this rule change is merely a setup to invite one (or all!) of the extremely marketable Clark Brothers from the low-viewed Next Great American Band over to the much-more-viewed mothership.
'AMERICAN IDOL' SHAKE UP [NYP]
Comments
Thank God, SOMETHING will be there to insult my intelligence if the writer's strike goes on.
Oh, AMEN on the death of the "mentor" shit.
I suspect they'd run out of possible candidates who were willing to come on the show (re: their years-long, futile quest to get Paul McCartney) and had both (a) a body of great songwriting รก la Barry Gibb; and (b) new product to flog.
I mean, how many more weeks of "theme mentors" could they have come up with? (Gwen Stefani mentoring the kids' singing '80s dance-pop; Jennifer Lopez mentoring the kids on Latin music; etc.) Once you've gone past Tony Bennett and Diana Ross to that shallow well, you've clearly run dry.
@dennisobell: I couldn't concur more with my buddy dennisobell's lack-of-lament about the scaling back of the mentors gimmick, and about how that well had gone dry -- seriously, Gwen Stefani as a singing mentor??? Sadly, however, I fear the Idol braintrust will simply dig the well even deeper.
Note that the pull-quote from the piece in the Post -- presumably, as Maura postulates, a somewhat-authoritative source due to "family connections" -- merely says "many fewer 'mentors'" [emphasis added]. I suspect we will see fewer mentors, yes, but I fear they will be even more head-scratchingly cheesy than, say, Lulu and Peter Noone.
I'm also curious to see how this "other musical talents" thing plays out [no pun intended]. I suspect this was an inevitable change after Blake Lewis and Haley Scarnato brought out their respective beatboxing and dressing-like-a-skank talents last season. [JK about Haley, 'course]
[P.S. BTW, I noted here on Friday that Idol was likely to see some big changes this season, which makes me about the 10 millionth Idol-watcher to make that prediction..
[idolator.com]]
I think this is why I loved the Rock Star series so much and lament its cancelation. No mentors, better talent... if only they could've come up with a more compelling incentive (hello Supernova?!) to keep people interested.
Instruments, hmmm.
Would manic tambourine playing count as a musical talent?
What about kazoo?
Or glockenspiel?
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