I just read a thing about American Idol haters. He basically just asks the question why. Most replies are dumb, some are good. Mine is in there if you look for it.
American Idol is the highest expression of the fact that the recording industry is concerned with nothing, half as much as they're concerned with making money. Any conceivable way for a record label to make a buck, it does. This show is a way to get ad revenue from the process of finding a gullible nobody who can sing, get them to sign away every right that isn't tied down by the constitution, research the market to see if their album would sell, and sell the album. In the end the contestant gets a couple of hundred thousand dollars in their pocket, and a story about how they were famous for a year or so.
It has nothing to do with finding actual talent. It's all about creating a One Hit Wonder
. Reference the album list of all the contestants who got deals. Their first album sells well, then they fall off a cliff. Sure Clarkson beat that trend with her second album doing much better than her first, but by her third she was back on the total crap track.
That is only the beginning. What I don't like is that they think their audience is so stupid that they can't see this. There isn't even any way for viewers to track the voting in a live website. For all anybody knows the votes are absolutely meaningless. In all likelihood, the producers choose remaining candidates, to ensure an interesting show. How blind do you have to be, to believe that they are leaving something as important as show dynamics, potential ratings and subsequent advertisement revenue to something as fickle as public opinion. The producers will want to know how people are voting, to measure what the demographic likes and dislikes, but they certainly can't let something so random make decisions for them. Suppose a contestant has some crazy outfit and then suddenly gets fewer votes. Therefore he gets kicked off by the rules, when previously he was always the front runner. The producers know he generally is the favored contestant and should continue. They also know that he needs to change his clothes. So even though the public voted him off he will continue and someone else will be removed, maybe because the contestant made a bad joke off camera one of the producers didn't like or maybe because they started showing some independent thought and disagreed with some suggestion.
My poorly made point is, that American Idol and all other reality shows, assume that their audience are idiots, and what pisses me off the most is the fact that the show's success proves them right.