It routinely runs 3-4 minutes over and I have to fast forward through the nonsense in order to get to Fringe.

It took a few times of this occurring before I finally set up my Fringe recording to record an extra 15 minutes.

I don’t view it as a “talent contest” at all. It is a popularity contest plain and simple. Sanjaya only lasted as long as he did because people felt sorry for him when in reality he sings like a dying wildebeest! This should not be allowed to happen.

Nick C, Bill and/or Robert, I have heard rumors that DWTS has discussed moving to Tuesday/Wednesday nights because it smells blood in the water (i.e.: the supposed fight between Paula and Kara; Simon thinking about jumping ship, etc.). Have you heard this?

If there has already been discussion about this I apologize.

Now I do. All of reality TV is stupid. I’m not saying that in a generally derogatory way. I mean literally it is for people with 2 digit IQs. The most recent example is this show I don’t remember the name of. The viewers vote each week on which of 2 jobs some dumb chick from NY will do for the next week. The vote was closed 2 days before the show aired. The person I talked to was actually voting based on what they want her to do. They don’t realize that it takes much more than two days to shoot and edit a show, even a reality one. And thus, this woman already did both of them! The voting doesn’t effect this woman in any way.

In general I don’t like any show that treats it’s audience like idiots. Sitcoms are nearly as bad as reality shows. There have been a few good ones, 70′s show, 3rd rock, almost all the rest are crap. Yes even Friends and Seinfeld.

Full disclosure: I can’t stand reality TV shows and the only one I will give an exception to is Amazing Race. Another full disclosure, I haven’t seen an episode of Amazing Race in 3 or 4 years.

On another note,I agree with those who say that reality tv helps kill lots of quality tv. That doesn’t mean that all scripted tv is quality, but that there are shows that all of us like (though it’s not always the same one)that could be canceled in part because of America’s new trend towards voyeurism.

It really doesn’t build suspense about the competition when they go on a commercial break.

These past two seasons when they asked the viewers to call in their choices after they show a clip of the “live” performance, they were really calling about their REHEARSAL performances.

Finally, if you want to text in your choice, make it a WIDER swath of texters. Not everyone has AT&T, which left a lot of people without it in the cold.

I don’t happen to enjoy baseball or basketball – its like watching paint dry to me — and yet many viewers are invested in the outcomes of these games and series. I’m not so pretentious that I think they’re morons because they care and I don’t.

That’s American Idol. A bunch of nobodies thinking they’ll be the next Michael Jackson, international singing sensation, by doing nothing but going to their local convention center on a tryout day and waiting for 10 hours in line.

But then again… I also hate Facebook, Myspace, and any sort of social event that makes people think that other people care at all what they do in their life. If these people had used AIM 10 years ago, or discussed things in internet forums for more than a week, they’d have realized long ago: No one cares.

Except in the case of American Idol… apparently people do care. Which disappoints me, because Grandmas and Mothers-In-Law and morons who can’t comprehend what happens in LOST every week without having 37 documentaries created about it are apparently dictating the direction of TV in this country.

Watching American Idol contributes to the declining intelligence in the world today.

Boris, if you’re still reading this thread, read this entry on the Flynn effect.

IQ scores are re-normalized periodically, so today’s 100 is not equivalent to a 100 in 1930.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

As I said earlier, a scripted show needs to be compelling enough so that it can handle the competition no matter what it is. But I do think the networks should stop trying to compete against competition shows with fiction shows. They should know by now that it’s extremely difficult and can cause shows that might be perfectly profitable in another time slot to get clobbered. Makes no sense to me. If a network can’t come up with a competition show to match some other show in a given time slot, they might as well just give up that time slot all together rather than “sacrifice” a good fiction show in a vain effort to derail the competition show.

Some fiction shows this season have done moderately well against competition shows, but in general it’s a bad idea to schedule that way.

Unscripted, you must be f–king kidding. The low life producers made that titled up themselves so they could avoided paying a living wage to the poor desperate people who work for them.

When I see the success of AI type of show, I think I am living in the United States of Dumbfuckstand.

Sorry Guys this subject( Unscripted) really tick’s me off.

I watch a variety of shows from drama’s like Damages, comedies like Better Off Ted and Chuck to Sci-fi shows like Fringe or supernatural shows like Supernatural. The fact that those shows don’t all get stellar ratings is not all Idols fault. a lot of it has to do with the advertising provided by their network, their time slot etc. Proper hype and scheduling count as much as who your competition is.

Even without Idol there will always be a show that dominates other more deserving shows. I was never a fan of Seinfeld but that was a ratings powerhouse in its day and it killed other shows like Idol does. Even if Idol did not exist other shows will always threaten our favorites.

“And as one my old mentors, Dr. Tim Leary, used to say: ‘Never trust anyone who comes on emotional.’”

The ship will be ours and you got to roll with it!
And though your master’s head’s blown off you got to go with it!

Just by the by, did comet Hyakutake manage to get through any follow-ups to the Starseed transmission?

In my case, however, I do pick the shows I watch based on their premises and the likelihood of their engaging me in a more conceptual sense – and possibly even a philosophical sense – than an emotional sense. I’ve always done that – with movies, books and even comic books. That’s why I gravitate more toward sci-fi, espionage, adventure media than comedic material. There’s more “meat” to it than your average family drama or romantic drama or comedy.

Which is not to say I don’t like getting a big emotional response from media. Take “V for Vendetta”, for instance. My primary interest is in the conceptual content of the movie. But the scene where Evey loses her fear is one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever had in watching a movie. It brings me to tears every time. But I’m completely incapable of getting emotional over who wins the SuperBowl.

It’s the difference between sirloin and luncheon meat. Competition shows are luncheon meat for the brain.

I guess the difference is that I don’t look to TV for philosophical components. I usually turn to books for that. Given censors, sponsor sensibilities, network sensibilities etc you will never get a TV show along the lines of books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Because of the above named factors everything on network TV will be watered down to an extent.

Also i just finished law school and during that time I had very little free time and I wanted to be entertained in what time I did have. A lot of people get enough mental stimulation from other more comprehensive sources and just don’t look to TV for that.

I’ll take a scripted hour first, mind you . . . .

When I say talent shows are entertainment, I don’t mean it in the same sense of shows like comedies or dramas. I mean they’re entertainment in a social sense. Some people may tune in just to hear talent perform, but others are tuning in for the competitive aspects, which are absent in scripted shows. That’s not engaging the brain.

“Unless all you watch are documentaries every scripted show is mere entertainment aimed at attaching to an emotional response.”

Not quite.

I tend not to like comedy shows either, partly because they don’t (usually) engage the brain. Nothing wrong with laughing at jokes, though.

But talent shows and game shows are basically like sports – they’re purely competitive. They engage the chimpanzee side of the human brain, not the cognitive side. Any scripted drama is going to engage the brain at least somewhat because you have to make judgments about what’s happening and what it means and what might happen next and how it relates to one’s own life (if only subconsciously). With a competition show, not so much.

There really is a reason to say that competition shows – talent shows, game shows, and sports – are somewhat less conceptual than dramas, if not comedies. Comedies can be conceptual depending on the concepts involved in the premise and the execution. But dramas are inherently more conceptual than competition shows. Mind you, not all dramas are “intellectual” in the sense of requiring intense thought, obviously. But dramas require significant conceptual processing compared to just watching a competition.

Bottom line: It’s easier and less brain taxing to watch any kind of competition than it is to watch a drama. And that doesn’t exclude all the effort that goes into sports kibitzing. While there’s a lot of analysis that goes into deciding who is more likely to win a game – or a talent contest or a “reality” show – it has little to do with one’s personal situation. A comedy or drama allows people to consider the human condition and how it applies to them. A competition show really doesn’t to the same degree.

This is not to say that competition shows “dumb down America” or anything. If anything, it’s the other way around. The educational system and the society has dumbed down, and the TV fare is the result, not the cause.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the difference between competition shows and scripted shows is the philosophical component. Scripted shows can – if not always do – engage the “examined life” concept, whereas competition shows really don’t. To some degree, of course, it depends on the individual. It’s not just an emotional response that a scripted show can produce in a viewer, it’s a conceptual response. But competition shows aren’t intended to stimulate that response in a viewer. They are designed more to elicit an emotional response.

And as one my old mentors, Dr. Tim Leary, used to say: “Never trust anyone who comes on emotional.”

I also think the root cause of the hatred has been pointed out many times over and that is the fact that Reality shows and scripted shows are judged by the same standards. As it has been said before if networks want to compare then they should pit their “reality” against one another and their scripted shows against other scripted stuff.

I could blame Idol because the CW sacrificed Reaper to it but I won’t. Instead I’m going to blame the CW for putting it against a show destined to beat it. If they really thought they could take Idol viewers they should have put America’s Next Top Model there instead. That way it would have been reality against reality and the fight would have been a fairer comparison.

American Idol is most likely hated because other networks put scripted shows up against it and they cancel them at the end of the season for “poor ratings.”

Star Search was a syndicated weekend show back in the 80s, so it didn’t compete with network prime-time.

I agree that “reality TV” is a ridiculous term–they are glorified talent, game, and documentary shows. And those things have been around for decades, just not on network prime-time.

As far as American Idol being mere entertainment I was always under the impression that that is what TV is for. Its a vehicle to entertain us. I don’t watch most Reality shows but I’m not going to demean those who do or say that the shows I do watch such as Damages or Big Bang Theory are more than entertainment. Do I watch those shows because they give me some brilliant insight into the legal profession or the social lives of nerds? No. I watch Damages because it excites me and keeps me in suspense. I watch Big Bang Theory because it makes me laugh. At their very heart even the most highbrow show evokes some base emotional response from its viewers. Unless all you watch are documentaries every scripted show is mere entertainment aimed at attaching to an emotional response.

In other words, the talent shows find very little top quality talent. Top quality talent comes from the bottom up, like The Corrs experiences, or sheer luck, which also applies to the Corrs. The talent shows have little to do with it.

The fact that some graduates of talent shows then got picked by the music industry to be hyped into “stars” is irrelevant. There are thousands of equally talented acts out there that will never be successful, regardless of whether they’re ever on a talent show, because the industry is based on “stars” (although the Internet is starting to break that down somewhat).

None of the people listed got where they are because of Star Search. And if it hadn’t been them, it would have been someone else. Pop rock music “stars” are mostly interchangeable.

So what’s the point of talent shows? Entertainment. That’s it. And people are entertained by competition, because it’s human nature – or to be more precise, primate nature. If one aspires to be more than a chimpanzee, I’d say avoid competition shows and watch shows that require a bit more thought. Which is not to say that scripted shows necessarily provide that – but they have the potential to do so that competition shows, including sports, do not.

Also to say that Justin Timberlake or Christina are only famous because of Britney is facetious. Both of them are very good entertainers and musicians on their own. Justin does pretty decent R&B music and Christina has good Pop music. Christina also has a voice that could make a good R&B singer if she worked at it.

The fact that you don’t like what those celebrities do doesn’t make them any less famous. The fact is millions have seen them and like what they do. I have never heard of the Corrs does that mean they aren’t famous?

Of that list, Sharon Stone is the only one I’d watch doing anything – and frankly, her last few movies haven’t exactly remade her as a star icon. The others you list certainly have had considerable success to one degree or another.

But I question whether any of those people actually got their major boost from Star Search. What did Sharon Stone do to get noticed? Basic Instinct and before that, Total Recall. Before that she was a nobody starlet in Steven Seagal level movies. I suspect Star Search had zero impact on her ultimate career.

Aguilera was hyped as the opposition to guess who? Britney. Where would Timberlake be without Britney? Manufactured “stars” with limited talent is what we have here. I still don’t know what Timberlake actually DOES other than date Jessica Biel (kudos to him for THAT!)

It’s really not an outstanding list when you step back and look at it.

Compare once again to The Corrs. They started out auditioning for a small part in The Commitments, picked up a manager from that, started writing songs, got a little song-writing contract, started playing pubs in Ireland. Got lucky to be noticed by a relative of the Kennedy clan and invited to play in the US. Spent weeks hunting around for record deal, got nothing but a spot on a 90210 episode by chance. Finally a record exec mentioned them to David Foster, the Big Man at the time. They crashed a Michael Jackson recording session the day before they were due to return to Ireland, managed to meet Foster, played for him and had a record deal the next day.

Then they spent years touring, then back to studio and touring again, hitting nearly every country. That’s how they sold thirty five million pop rock albums – even beating U2 in the UK – and never did “break the States”. Which is something I’ve never understood because although the three Corrs sisters aren’t bimbos like Britney and Christina and Jessica, they’re still pretty damn hot. And there’s more Irish descendants in the US than Irish in Ireland.

The Corrs worked their butts off for their success. I’m not saying Britney and the rest don’t work hard – clearly they do. But that’s AFTER they’re picked by the Powers That Be because they’re bimbos that can be merchandised. The real reason the Corrs never broke the States is because they refused to go that way.

Alex: I agree with Holly. Sports counts as unscripted. And ABC isn’t doing ANY sports in the winter? None? Personally I don’t see the approximately fifty-fifty breakdown of scripted/unscripted being that big a deal. But your use of the word “vastly” is clearly incorrect. Go with “even” and I have no complaint.

In 2008, the five highest grossing live action films were: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hancock and Twilight.

And yet all of those were ignored in the major voting categories of Best Film, Director, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actress. Dark Knight did get a nod for Supporting Actor, but none of the other films did.

While this is but one example, I’d argue that oftentimes what is most popular with the public is very different from that which is critically acclaimed, no matter what medium it is we are discussing.

Now to Idol! I watch it when I can and I must say I love the show. I like the results show the best because now there are great performances every week from some really talented people.

Then I see the comments on here about the lack of talent. I am not sure how you guys decide who is and who isn’t talented. But Carrie Underwood, Fantastia, Kelly, Chris D, and now a long list of others have done really well.

Maybe the problem here is simple. Idol is a show that allows people to get up and do something. Many of these kids work very hard at trying to make something of a career. Maybe there is so much hate because instead of sitting at a computer hating on the world of those who try, these people are doing something!

I rest my case. The listed movies and TV shows further down in the article are precisely why I’ve never of this guy and never intended to.

“Over the long run, IQ scores are up, SAT scores are up, literacy rates are up, college graduation rates are up.”

I’m not sure about the metrics behind SAT scores, but IQ scores are, by definition, not “up.” IQ is not an absolute measure–it’s both population and age normalized.

True story.

Album sales have nothing whatever to do with quality, just like ratings of TV shows have nothing to do with quality (although LOW ratings CAN be a sign of bad quality or other problems, as TSCC proved.)

And for those citing talent show types who go on to have ONE Platinum record, it’s not really that hard to get a platinum record IF you’ve been on a recent TV show for weeks or months at a time. Try getting a platinum record WITHOUT having been a TV star first – that’s considerably harder.

My favorite rock band, the Irish family group The Corrs, sold thirty five million or more albums world wide, and did have a number one hit in the US with “Breathless” back in 2000, but basically they’re almost unknown over here, despite being singers/songwriters/musicians of considerable talent as well as being probably the best looking band in the world, twice nominated for Grammies.

Also the Spice Girls, to whom the word quality is unknown (based on their first single I heard), went on to sell 70 million albums, twice what the Corrs sold in half the time – with half the talent of the Corrs.

In other words, they were a “fad band” and most of the people coming out of the talent shows can be considered “fad stars”. In other words, no longevity.

Sales have nothing to do with quality and more to do with name recognition which is precisely what you get from shows like American Idol.

Oh, god…the woman who sounds like a cat being beaten to death in an alley. I heard her first song on the radio and resolutely have never allowed myself to ever listen to anything coming out of her mouth since.

Another good reason for denying that Star Search was ever worth watching.

Me? I like seeing aspiring nobodies chase their dreams. I realize “Idol” is not always the fairest of competitions, what with the producers’ agenda and the attempted manipulation (not that it worked out for them this year), but it has good chemistry and much better production values than most other shows. That includes “The Amazing Race” — which may have won 125 Emmys but is hosted by a block of wood. People don’t want to watch it? Then don’t. Go watch your low-rated nerd shows. There are plenty of Top 10 shows I personally don’t care to watch. You can start with “Dancing with the Stars,” move on to “The Mentalist” and end with “Grey’s Anatomy.” Obviously, as long as people are watching them, they will stay on the air. My personal tastes do not dictate what gets to stay on the air. And neither do yours.