Idol Chatter & Voice Views

FOX executives have said American Idol is in for some creative tweaking before Season 12.

Hardly surprising.  The show lost more than 20 percent of its audience in Season 11.  Younger viewers fled at a faster clip.  And the finale that just aired was the least-watched ever, with between 20.9 and 21.5 million viewers, depending on whose numbers you use.

Some of that is beyond Idol’s control.  There’s suddenly a glut of singing shows on network TV.   And no signs of that changing.

ABC just launched Duets.  NBC is bringing The Voice back for a fall season.  And, of course, Simon Cowell and The X Factor will be back, with Demi and Britney on board.

I mean, air the Super Bowl four times a year, and it’d seem less special, too.

But tweaking?  Oh, yeah, Idol could use some tweaking.

Just don’t tweak too much, folks.  It one thing became clear this spring, it’s that Idol still has the best singing show format around.  The Voice, with it’s many, many missteps, is a very distant second.

Anyway, here are some tweaks I’d suggest.

1. Introductions:  The Voice does one thing better than Idol, introducing us to contestants we’ll be voting for later in the show.  We met nearly every auditioner who passed the blind auditions.  On Idol, there are still mystery contestants who wind up in the semifinals.  In Season 11, Hollie Cavanagh and Jessica Sanchez, barely seen to that point, overcame the obstacle.  But others — Chelsea Sorrell, Chase Likens, Haley Johnsen — did not.  It smacks of unfairness.  And it’s inexcusable.

2. Themes:  Billy Joel Week?  Songs from the year of their birth?  Heck, there were other weeks the Idols were lucky if they could choose a song released that recently.  Idol needs to freshen up its themes.  And stick solely to broad themes that allow each performer to stay in their comfort zone.  Doesn’t it stand to reason that the performances will be better if the cast is singing songs they know and love.

3. Shorter shows:  When Nigel Lythgoe returned as executive producer of Idol for Season 10, he promised shorter half-hour results shows.  It never happened.  Instead, this year, every performance show was stretched to two hours.  Now that was a move in the wrong direction.  My guess is that ratings would climb if the shows were shorter.  Of course, ad revenue would drop, so don’t count on that happening.

4. The voting:  OK, The Voice does a second thing better than Idol.  It limits the number of votes a viewer can cast.  Or at least tries to.  This isn’t about breaking the white-guy-with-guitar stranglehold on the Idol crown.  The gal — immensely talented Juliet Simms — didn’t win The Voice either.  It’s about involving more viewers.  Viewers who are not going to dial or text for two hours straight — until midnight for crying out loud — to have a hope of making a difference in the outcome.

5. A real judge:  Wasn’t it nice to hear Jimmy Iovine’s succinct, on-the-mark critiques of contestants’ performances on results night this season? I mean, Jimmy had a tendency to be brutally honest, even though he helped mentor those very same contestants. Wouldn’t it be better to hear that sort of critique on performance night, before votes were cast?  Of course, it would. In fact, it needs to happen. If Jimmy’s incapable of providing that type of feedback live, Nigel Lythgoe needs to find someone who can, then create an opening on the judges’ panel if one doesn’t develop on its own.

6.  That final song:  Jessica Sanchez was panning her final song before she ever left the stage.  So were all the judges.  The day after he won, Phillip Phillips said his final song wasn’t one he would have written and was too pop in his mind.  Those final songs have been an Idol problem for years, often spoiling the very last performance on the very last performance show.  I devoted an entire blog to what Idol should do: Basically, let the contestants decide what they want to sing.   Without limits.  Doing the same in the Top 3 show would be an improvement, too.  What good does it do to hear Jimmy admit he picked the wrong songs for two of three contestants after the votes are cast?

So there you have it FOX.  Six suggestions for tweaking Idol.

Happy tweaking.