Australian Idol
Channel 10
Just finished
BY DAVE RILEY
With a net annual profit of $76.93 million to crow about, Network Ten's hold on the youth market demographic is sure to continue — at least until it's milked what it can from the recently completed series of Australian Idol.
Idol looks set to be the biggest ratings hit of 2004. It is the most watched television program around the country among teenagers and young adults. Almost 2 million viewers tune in each Sunday night.
But the momentum Idol has generated tends to obscure the fact that it is essentially another gong show. After nationally orchestrated televised try-outs of thousands of pop wannabees, the culling process was skilfully manipulated by the show's producers. Like its reality counterpart, Survivor, contestants were required to prevail by dint of true grit and maybe a good set of pipes.
The new protocol for interactive television is that competition rules. When last year's Idol winner, Guy Sebastian, released his first album and single they both went straight to number one on the ARIA charts. Whoever wins Idol this time around is guaranteed to replicate such success. Unlike Big Brother, in which the succession of households simply broke up at the end, Idol offers the loyal watcher the prospect of investing further in the winner's future by buying the end product.
Idol may be a gong show with sophisticated production values, but the way viewers are encouraged to identify with and relate to their preferred performer ensures that their loyalty is snared — and despite themselves, viewers will be tuning in again to witness the unfolding tale of how Casey, Anthony, Chanel or whoever fare in their quest for the big time. And they can do this three nights each week through three hours of prime-time television.
But at its core, Idol is a bunch of young people with a proverbial hope or dream and maybe the talent to realise it. The contestants' sincere passion for what they do — sing — seem acutely out of place amid the shenanigans they are asked to endure, as week by week they are methodically moulded and culled. Each week the demands made by the show are more acute. And each week the voting masses are asked to help design the marketing template they later will be asked to purchase. While your standard Idol contestant may be a youngster from the suburbs enjoying their allocated 15 minutes of fame, Network 10, the recording studios and corporate advertisers are making millions. Vocal intonation may be discussed and dwelled upon, and we may thrill at the pure artistry of some of these performances but what's required is, in the end, a marketable package.
However, a lot of issues are played out on the way. Idol is such a major phenomenon and because it embraces a key expressive form such as popular music, the exchanges around it are well worth tuning into. Even a quick tour of the Idol website's message boards confirms this. Young people employ music as an important tool to explain or explore the world. Despite all the attempts by the show's minders and judges to shape the end product and reformat these young people to rule — and the youngest in the final is 16 — their determination to remain themselves is impressive.
From Green Left Weekly, November 24, 2004.
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