Case Summary S12-2013 Part 1: The Rant - What The Hell Happened With The Ratings?

I've started assembling the recap of the year in review and realized I've got a lot to cover. So rather than make one huge post I've decided to break it up into 4 parts. This will not only make it easier for me to post, easier for Blogger to handle, and easier for the bots out there who are hitting my site. Hi guys!

Part 1: The Rant - What The Hell Happened With The Ratings?

The number one question asked about American Idol Season 12 is: what the hell happened with the ratings? Why did they tank so badly? Was it the judges? Was it the contestants? Was it the outdated themes? Actually, it was none of the above.

Yes, Glitter Girl babbled too much and could never say anything negative, but so did J-Lo and Jagger Lite before her, Chicken Little E before them, and Drunk Chick before her. Idol has always had a judge who did that, Mariah was just the latest. Jaws was another target of the critics with her stupid wigs, her stupid nicknames, and her stupid comments like wanting to eat the contestants, but does anybody except for me and the other Idol recappers out there really care what the judges have to say? No one has cared what Sole Survivor has said ever since the show began, and Mr. Kidman is just an Australian country version of Randy. So no, it wasn’t the judges.

It wasn’t the contestants either. There was the usual mix of good singers, good looking people, good ethnicities, and the one person who really doesn’t belong there (yes, I’m looking at you Lazaro). They have had the same mix every year, this year wasn't really much different from the years when the ratings were sky high. Indeed the mix was better this year than most. A good indicator of that is the fact that the contest was won by the best singer. So no, it wasn’t the contestants.

Some pundits thought the ratings decline was because of the outdated themes such as Burt Bacharach night and yet another Beatles night. But again, Idol has always had outdated theme nights. This year’s themes were much better than ones used in previous seasons like Disco Night, Gwen Stefani Night, and Latin Night when only one contestant sang a song in Spanish. Remember too that there was no Idol Gives Back lovefest this year. We could have probably lived without Burt Bacharach Night but the rest were not as terrible as what we have endured before. So no, it wasn’t the themes.

It was the producers who killed Idol this season, the producers who were determined not to have another white guy with a guitar win and did everything except banning dude contestants to make that happen. The problem is that by stacking the deck with chicks, non-white dudes, and some ambiguously gay dudes in between; forbidding the judges to use the save on a dude contestant; and reducing the number of voting rounds the producers managed to scare away their one remaining dedicated audience, tweener chicks and their cougar moms. I can understand why the producers did this since this group managed to scare away everybody else by dominating the voting the last several years, but they really should have done this years ago like I once suggested. Doing it now was too late; it was the proverbial closing the barn doors after the horses have escaped. Perhaps the producers were hoping that the rest of their audience will come back next season now that they have proved that a chick can win this competition. Maybe they will, but if they don’t then their overlords at Fox will have a decision to make, and it may not be pretty.

OK, that's my soapbox rant for the season. In the next few days I will posts Parts 2, 3, & 4. Part 2 will be a recap of the season including the final score, your three stars of the season, and the sob stories of the season. Part 3 will be a recap of all the things we learned from Idol this year, and Part 4 will be my fearless predictions of the future careers of the Top 12 contestants.

And here I thought I would have nothing to say...