Friday, July 31, 2009

I hate being right all the time.

Regular readers (if I have any) know that in the past I've railed against the bane of television, American Idol. Sadly, it is very popular and has led to a bunch of copycat programs too numerous to mention.
I have been cynical of the show and its format, saying things such as this:
I think you're seeing the show for what it is: A manipulative, ridiculous excuse for a talent show that has for years, adjusted its audience in such a way as to present what they feel are people worthy of recording contracts. Otherwise, how could you possibly explain the idea of whittling down a few hundred thousand contestants to six without knowing the outcome beforehand?
Alas, one former contestant, a Junot Joyner, has come out and said words to that effect. I don't know anything about him other than he is a former contestant and subsequent loser. In addition to being a self-proclaimed "troublemaker" he accuses the show of rigging the outcome.
In an online chat, he described the show's contract as a "slavetract", and alleged that his actions got Idol producers so annoyed that they called him a "troublemaker", and led executive producer Ken Warwick to tell him that he's "not going to ruin my show"."I definitely believed that affected my time on the show," he added. "They didn't like the fact that I wouldn't sign 'just anything' and that other contestants were coming [to] asking me questions.
So I think they ousted me the first chance they could get ... how did I not get picked for the Wild Card show when I received comments from the 'judges' that were better than most of the contestants who were picked?"He also thought he didn't get into the Top 13 because he refused to let the producers play with his I'm-from-the-hood back story. "They wanted me to put that out to the world and expose my personal business for ratings," he said. "I wouldn't do it."
He also alleged that Kris Allen's victory on the show was fixed. While he clarified that he admires his talent and he deserves the win, he says the outcome was manipulated.
"The producers know who they want and they slant it to reflect that," Junot said. "They fix it in a way that makes you surprised but it's still manipulated."
"[American Idol] is a reality show with writers!" he added. "We're all actors. All these shows have writers that guide public opinion."
Originally, I saw the story on Yahoo's front page on Thursday. I neglected to bookmark it, figuring that I could go back to it when I got home. For some strange reason (raising an eyebrow) the story miraculously disappeared, and it wasn't until today that I found a similar story from another source, a web site called buddytv.com. Why would Yahoo pull the story?
Regardless of any media manipulation by the gang at Fox and the AI producers, who would stand to lose their self-made fortunes if the story were ever investigated, I would only pose this question:
When have you ever seen actual numbers for the vote totals?

3 comments:

Firestarter5 said...

Like Seinfeld before it, I have never watched a single episode of any of the 'idol' shows. I know I haven't missed anything.

susan said...

I watched one episode of the first season. i couldn't stand Simon and never watched again, until a season or so ago, my mother called and made me watch Sanjaya sing.

That was so bad, the cat howled and ran under the bed crying, like she does with thunder boomers.

Do you think I should have written to Fox and said they were guilty of making my cat howl/cry?

Anthony said...

Based on what I've heard, the cat howling might have made the semi-finals.