8th Season Brings Changes to American Idol

Below is a link to an article about the changes in the new season of American Idol.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/arts/television/13idol.html?ref=television

While I applaud a lot of the changes that the show is implementing - airing three weeks of auditions instead of four, and even the addition of the new judge - I'm not a big fan of the show in general, and will to continue to not watch it. I have watched it on occasion (because one of my roommates was watching, or because my family was), and while some of the performances may be worth watching, I generally think the show is a waste of time and wonder what it says about us as a society that it's the most popular show on primetime television.

The main feature of the show is Simon Cowell - the show even admits this - and while his comments can, at times, be amusing, they can also get old. I do think that the move to bring Kara DioGuardi in to challenge him will be interesting and could create some drama. I've always thought that the other two judges on the show are totally worthless and unnecessary, but she has the potential to create some controversy.

The move to get rid of a week of the auditions is also a good one, I think. There are a lot of people who find the humor behind them amusing (because of all the people who have absolutely zero talent and only tryout to be on TV), but I think it's silly. When the goal of the show is to find a good performer, I don't know why we spend so much time looking at people who are only wasting the judges's time. I mean, I understand that it gets ratings, but I'm really tired of shows making stupid decisions for the ratings (cough, Grey's Anatomy, cough). This is a good decision, though.

I don't know how I feel about the move to having 36 semifinalists instead of 24. That's a lot, I think. But it could work - maybe. It'll take time to really draw a conclusion about that, I think.

Overall, though, I think that American Idol wastes a lot of time. They devote an hour a week specifically to kicking people off - I don't get that. Why does it take an hour to tell the United States who is safe and who isn't? It's long and drawn out and silly. If they want to have a two-hour episode every week (like, say, The Biggest Loser) and spend the last half an hour kicking people off, fine. But watching for an entire hour just to see who gets kicked off? Weird, and wrong. And can someone tell me why we need an eighth season of it? That's like eight too many.

So I will not be watching to see how these new changes play out. Though, if the FOX producers ever decide to go through with their idea to move from Tuesday/Wednesday to Wednesday/Thursday, which would allow them to compete with the drastically declining material those homophobic jerks over at ABC/Grey's Anatomy are producing, I might have to start.