I am not proud of it, but my current dirtiest TV secret is that I have been
watching all three of the major singing completion shows for the last three
years or so. I don’t want to try to justify this viewing choice (I have a
few lame rationalizations); but I am interested in learning if there is any
perceived difference among these programs, either in terms of which is more
entertaining to watch, or which produces the best singers.
I think I might actually enjoy watching The Voice the most – and God help
me, it is probably because two of the judges have just won me over with
their likability. I had never head of Blake Shelton before the show began,
and figured he was just the resident country singer (a style of music I do
not enjoy and am not familiar with). He has turned out to be (or at least
seem to be) genuinely genuine (not the kind of fake genuine that a lot of
people go for on TV), and aside from his genre, he just has a really nice
voice. I was familiar with Maroon 5 but not a huge fan of their music, but
it turns out I kind of like Adam Levine. Cee Low is about as obnoxious as I
would have imagined, but he has a better voice than I thought he did. The
other one is even more obnoxious than I thought she would be, has a good
voice, but uses it in about as obnoxious a way as I thought she would.
I go into some detail, because even though I like watching that show the
best, I am not sure that it produces the best singers. I certainly did not
like the woman who won last night (I did like the guy who came in 2nd), but
then I did not like Carrie Underwood the year she won Idol, and she has
done okay. But just based on later success it seems like I have seen
American Idol winners and even losers appear in other high profile venues
after doing AI, and several appear to have sold lots of “records” and
concert tickets, while I don’t think I have seen anyone who appeared on
X-Factor last year, or the two previous editions of The Voice, anywhere.
Could it be that the appeal of The Voice (and X-Factor, which clearly seems
to be the least entertaining of the three to watch) is more in the
personalities of the celebrities who do the judging/coaching, overshadowing
the singers a bit, while Idol for all its flaws still puts the spotlight on
the singers? While I don’t remember any of the contestants on Idol from
last season right this minute, I think while I was watching the program I
did know their names, while with the other two shows I tend to not even
really learn the singer’s names that much, and think of them in terms of
their relationship to their coach. Of course it may just be that The Voice
and X Factor alums are very successful, just in places that I am too old to
register.
A quick glimpse at the ratings suggests a more obvious reason why the AI
singers seem (at least from my limited glimpse at the pop music world) to
be doing better; for all the gnashing of teeth over Idol, it still gets
much higher ratings than the other two – its Finale attracted about 50%
more viewers as the most recent finales of the other two combined, and did
as well in the demo as the other two combined (we will see how X-Factor
does tomorrow):
18-49 rating Total Viewers (million)
AI Spring 2012 Finale: 6.1 20.71
The Voice Fall 2012 Finale 2.4 8.07
X-Factor Fall 2011 Finale 3.8 4.89
*I had to get these numbers from two different sources, but I think they
are comparable. To be fair, I probably should go back and find The Voice
numbers from last spring, when it was competing head to head with AI as
opposed to the weaker X Factor.
Add: The Voice. I know it is fashionable to criticize NBC for over-exposing
The Voice, invoking ABC’s problems with WWTBAM, but I have always
disagreed. NBC was just dead, almost ceasing to exist as a real national
television network, at least during primetime. The Voice, along with Sunday
Night Football, has enabled them to get off the mat. Even if it were true
that The Voice could have a 10 year+ career if it were kept to once a year,
I think it would be more than worth it to NBC to ride that horse for only 4
years twice a year if it allows them to come back from the dead. The
difference is that back in the day ABC seemed to almost go to sleep at the
switch, thinking it might never have to develop another scripted program
again, and had nothing to fall back on when the crash came. NBC, I assume
is working hard to develop scripted and other programs to take advantage of
this reprieve – they may fail of course, but if they do it will be because
they were not able to develop popular programing, not because they
over-exposed The Voice.
--
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