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How 'American Idol' destroyed itself

 
Published May 13, 2015

The symptoms were all there for American Idol — falling ratings, high talent costs, advertiser defections. Few were surprised when Fox announced this week that the show's upcoming 15th season would be its last.

What's perhaps less obvious is that the one-time ratings juggernaut lost its way several years ago, when it moved away from the pulse of pop in its broadest and most inclusive sense. It became less relevant to the overall musical conversation — a smaller and smaller echo chamber reverberating with outmoded ideas. Or as its detractors put it on Twitter, it became just another forum for WGWG — white guys with guitars.

In its heyday, Idol served as a latter-day version of 1960s AM radio, with more stylistic and demographic diversity than network music programming typically offered. Everyone in the show's audience had a rooting interest, and because the show depended on its viewers to steer the competition, it created the impression that, week to week, something pivotal was on the line — and it required your participation.

The Season 8 finale would have been a good one to end on. That's when Adam Lambert, the peacocking glam-rock phenom, was up against Kris Allen, a milquetoast folkie.

Picking a side felt important, like a battle in a broader culture war. It reflected something about your identity, or at least about your idea of what you wanted music to represent: adventure vs. safety. Innovation vs. re-creation. The future vs. the status quo.

It was the show's pop sensibility, along with its freshness and originality, that made it a hit from the beginning, way back in 2002. Idol was the No. 1 show on TV for a record eight seasons. Suddenly aspiring performers had a way to find fame and fortune without record companies in those pre-YouTube dark ages.

Most visibly, it made fresh superstars out of Kelly Clarkson, who came in first on Idol's inaugural edition, and Season 4 champ Carrie Underwood.

The show also helped change the way those superstars do business by heavily promoting the sale of digital downloads (specifically through Apple's iTunes Store) at a moment when illegal piracy was ravaging the record industry's original profit centers.

American Idol affected pop more subtly, too. A contest decided in part by viewers, the show encouraged an emotional investment among fans that foreshadowed the rise of social media, where artists are accountable to their followings in ways their predecessors could scarcely have imagined. Singers like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry have capitalized on that sense of ownership to build so-called "fandoms" of ultra-devoted enthusiasts.

But following Allen's win over Lambert in Season 8, Idol went on to anoint a series of increasingly bland Everymen that suggested the show had fallen out of touch with pop's variety. Good singers continued to file across the stage, of course, most notably the big-voiced soul belter Candice Glover, who won the competition in 2013 only to be neglected by the record label that awarded her a contract.

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Last year's winner, Caleb Johnson — that's his name, right? — seemed totally adrift as an artist, mere chum used to attract viewers (and advertisers) to a TV show whose dramatic stakes never felt lower. Why bother getting invested if the program wasn't going to match your devotion?

As the show aged, American Idol also erred by showcasing its judges at the expense of its contestants. In the days of the show's founding panel — Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell, the last of whom helped bring Idol to America from Britain — the experts appeared genuinely dedicated to steering the young hopefuls placed before them. Sure, Cowell could be nasty, but he always had a point. More important, he was assessing performances by the demanding standards of Top 40 radio, not the closed-off ecosystem of the show itself. When he left in 2010, followed eventually by Abdul and Jackson, Idol lost much of its pop savvy, which producers tried to replace by hiring actual pop stars, including the show's current troika of Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick Jr.

Still, as we prepare to say goodbye to this giant of American entertainment, it's easy to imagine missing the excitement American Idol used to generate at its peak.

Fighting about music won't be the same once it's gone.

Mikael Wood writes about pop music for the Los Angeles Times.