Spending Idol time
My daughters kept telling me that I was missing an appealing new TV program, American Idol. Taking into consideration the 21-plus age difference among us, I took this with a grain of salt.
But when the latest ones voted off the show the night before started showing up on Today every morning while I was getting ready for work, I decided, if Katie thought they are of interest, then maybe it is worth checking out.
So I tuned in one evening about six weeks into the competition.
The commonality of reality programming these days is just this side of ridiculous.
On any given night, depending upon your preference, you can watch a bunch of petty people thrown into the same house for a period of time while �Big Brother� watches. Or you can observe what happens when a kid brings home three choices to date and lets his or her parents pick the winner.
If neither one of these grab you, how about one bachelor who starts out with 30 choices for a bride and whittles them down week by week? I figured this new selection would just be more of this inane drivel.
Then I watched.
I got hooked.
The first thing I came away with was a heightened appreciation for people truly talented enough to sing and actually make money at it. There were some painful people who fortunately didn�t make it. And while there were three judges who gave their opinions each week, it was the viewers who, by number of phone calls made to the remaining competitors, actually chose the folks who stuck around week to week.
When it got down to the final two, Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson, it was quite obvious the young lady was the one with the real talent. I think the kid could sing anything in any genre thrown at her. She belted out a great rendition of Aretha Franklin�s �Respect� and did just as respectable a job on a torch song from the �40s.
She was the judges� choice and, in the end, the public�s choice for their first American Idol.
As is true with most things, American Idol is not an original concept. That was revealed when, on the final two episodes, the winner of the English Idol came across the Atlantic to perform.
Don�t shed a tear for the nine who didn�t make it. They, along with Kelly Clarkson, are taking the show on the road appearing in 28 cities during the next few months.
And believe it or not, audience share was so high for the debut format, there is already a second run of American Idol in the works.
Before anyone credits the English with this venue or think we�ve stumbled on a brand-new idea, do you remember the Gong Show?
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