American Idol pats itself on the back while keeping their hands in their pockets

Most of my regular readers know the contempt with which I hold American Idol and its participants. If you don't, you can do a simple "blog search" and find out. Take all the time you need.

Earlier this week, they did something that they called Idol Gives Back, which conjures up several jokes which you can make up on your own, or if you'd like, you can e-mail me and I will send to you. Either way, it was a sham of a fraud, which follows in line with the rest of the show.

LOS ANGELES - An American Idol charity special filled with wrenching pictures of impoverished children and celebrity appeals raised more than $600 million, Fox said Thursday

A total of $5 million was pledged by Fox parent company News Corp., which gave 10 cents for each of the first 50 million votes received for contestants on Tuesday's show. More than 70 million votes were cast, a record for the show, Fox said.

Oh, Fox, you generous bastards. Or not. What about the money from the other 20 million votes? Check their pockets. Most of the $60 million came from celebrities and corporations, not the show itself.

Once I heard about this and saw the self-aggrandizing advertisements, I figured that the numbers probably wouldn't add up. The ad I saw on Sunday proclaimed it "a night to remember", which was interesting since no one had seen it yet. It struck me as a pompous bit of self-promotion for a franchise that has returned a fraction of what it has taken in - or nothing, if you ask me. Creating artificial celebrities does nothing to benefit society, and this charity event that they staged was as phony as the show itself.

And, what a shocker ... no one was eliminated, which means that all the votes were for naught, since they get to milk this nonsense for another week of prime-time advertising revenue.

Tuesday night's special episode was pre-taped, not live, as Access Hollywood revealed. It started off phony and lost ground as it went.

Let's examine the numbers, shall we? We shall. This appeared on Advertising Age's web site on September 26, 2006:

For the third year in a row, the American Idol Tuesday night show is commanding the highest advertising rates for a television show, according to Advertising Age. The rate for a 30-second spot on the show is between $500,000 and $700,000.

This bit of perspective comes from Reality Blurred, not me. I love the headline:

American Idol gives back $5 million of its $2.5 billion.

But $5 million? Let’s be honest: It’s a generous donation, but is not that much relative to how much cash the show is pulling in. Fortune estimated that each Tuesday performance show makes an average of $16.39 million in advertising, and each results episode pulls $14.19 million. So, that’s $30.58 million per week. Even if those averages are generous or overestimate the actual revenue (since many ads are from show sponsors such as Ford and Cingular), $5 million is nice but not exactly bank-breaking - especially considering that the entire Idol franchise is worth more than $2.5 billion.
Back-breaking would be a nice start. They prefer to pat themselves on the back rather than break it. The donations made to charity were as hollow as the show itself, which doesn't surprise me, really. Am I disappointed? It's a Fox franchise, remember.

What they "gave back" amounted pocket change relative to what the show and its franchise is worth.

What they gave back isn't even a third of their ad revenue from one show. Meanwhile, they are in their sixth season of stealing money from viewers, phone voters, advertisers and the general public.
Giving back valuable network TV air-time would be worth more than the $5 million.