Posted Jul 1st 2009 12:03PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: Industry, American Idol, Celebrities, Judges
If Simon Cowell decides to stay in his judge's chair on
American Idol, he'll have to squeak along on a salary of more than $100 million.
The U.K. and U.S. tabloid press reports that
Cowell is negotiating for more than $140 million to return to
Idol. That's just a slight raise over the reported $36 million he made for sitting on his backside and ridiculing warbling wannabes last year.
Who knew being aggressively obnoxious and judgmental could pay off so well? (In fairness, his very successful work as a record executive might have played a little part in his success, too.)
Continue reading Cowell hunting a cash cow before returning to American Idol
Posted Jun 26th 2009 10:03AM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: OpEd, American Idol, Celebrities, Obituaries, Alumni
In the wake of his surprise death yesterday,
the networks scrambled to cobble together retrospectives of Michael Jackson's life and works and get them on the air as quickly as possible. I expect we'll see more carefully planned tributes coming down the road. But none perhaps more bizarre than
Fox's proposed tribute to the King of Pop, coming up this Monday, June 29 at 8 ET.
They've decided to air an encore of the Michael Jackson themed episode of
American Idol from this past season. In it, the
Top 13 contestants performed from Jackson's catalogue. It's a bizarre choice, because despite a few good performances, notably from Kris Allen, Alexis Grace and Allison Iraheta, most of the performances were either okay or downright terrible. I'd think you'd want some good singing of perhaps some of his better known works to honor the man.
Continue reading Fox offering up a bizarre MJ tribute Monday: a repeat of American Idol
Posted Jun 25th 2009 3:04PM by Michael Pascua
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, American Idol, Host, So You Think You Can Dance
The summertime is when I could get a breath of fresh air from
Ryan Seacrest. By the end of
American Idol, I'm just hoping that Ryan would stop interviewing contestants and just get to the singing. Eventually the confetti falls, we have a winner, and Ryan Seacrest disappears from my television until January.
So You Think You Can Dance rolls around and we're greeted by the wonderful Cat Deeley. I have to admit that she's light years ahead of Ryan Seacrest. She may not be as witty as
Tom Bergeron, but she brings a flair to her hosting duties.
Continue reading Why Cat Deeley is better than Ryan Seacrest
Posted Jun 21st 2009 6:07PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, American Idol, Celebrities, Host, Celebreality
Somebody has to stop
Ryan Seacrest. Please. I mean it. He's going too far.
Seacrest tweeted that he is talking with Lindsay Lohan about her own reality show. Presumably it'll be in the vein of Ryan's other reality star vehicles,
Keeping Up With the Kardashians and
Denise Richards: It's Complicated. Notice that I didn't say it would have the same quality as those other shows because if you've ever watched more than an episode, you know that quality is not a requirement. Manipulation, mugging and broad fake emotions are all that's necessary.
So,
Lindsay Lohan, heed my warning: stop talking to Ryan Seacrest. No good will come of it.
Continue reading Stop Ryan Seacrest for Lindsay Lohan's sake
Posted Jun 12th 2009 4:29PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: American Idol, Contestants
It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that Kris Allen was crowned the new
American Idol champion (it was), but
auditions for the next season have already begun! As this photo from
The Boston Herald shows, contestants had to stand out in the rain at Gillette Stadium (home of the New England Patriots). This is the first of seven cities where auditions will be held. (There's also video at the link above, where you can see one or two singers that might have their dreams crushed.)
Posted Jun 11th 2009 3:00PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, The Amazing Race, American Idol, Survivor, Big Brother (US), Dancing With The Stars, Celebreality
Considering how prevalent reality television is these days, it's got to be a pretty daunting task to try and put together a comprehensive list of the best and worst of all time. But
Entertainment Weekly thinks they've done just that. They've compiled the
top 20 reality shows of all time, but also the
ten worst reality shows of all time. All in all, they did a pretty damned good job.
I completely agree with the top six, but they lose me with
Jackass at number seven. I have never understood the appeal of filming morons doing stupid things on purpose just to be stupid. But there were some shows missing from the list completely, like
Little People Big World, So You Think You Can Dance and
Beauty and the Geek. Surely those shows are better than
The Hills and
The Real Housewives of Sesame Street, or whatever franchise they're spinning now.
Continue reading EW declares the all-time best and worst of reality television
Posted Jun 9th 2009 6:07PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: American Idol, Celebrities, Contestants
American Idol runner-up
Adam Lambert is on the cover of the new Rolling Stone, and he reveals a lot of information. Eight things I learned:
1. He's gay.
2. He's "glamboyant." (To quote Liz Lemon, that's a thing now?)
3. He doesn't tuck.
4. He had a crush on Kris Allen.
5. He has only dressed in drag three or four times.
6. He's not a civil rights leader.
7. He had a "psychedelic experience" at Burning Man
8. Seriously, he's gay.
Posted Jun 3rd 2009 1:27PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: American Idol, Judges, News and Gossip
Get on your craziest costume and ask your mom again if you really, really can sing because it's time to start the process of making an ass of yourself on national television all over again. Only this time, the crazies who go to the first round of auditions won't get the chance to sing in front of the judges until a callback sometime later this summer. That's because while they want to get the audition process under way,
American Idol doesn't know if they're bringing back Paula Abdul or Kara DioGuardi.
I wonder if this move will keep some of the crazies away. Now you're looking at two entirely separate trips just to look stupid on television. Will it still be worth it? Sure, the local crazies will still come out, but what about the travelers? It is interesting to note that
Idol is changing the process up this much due to contract questions. That must mean that they're really not sure about one or both of the women's return to the show. DioGuardi was on a one-year deal, while Abdul's multi-year contract ended this season.
Continue reading American Idol to hold auditions sans judges while mulling fates of Abdul, DioGuardi
Posted May 28th 2009 2:27PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: American Idol, Contestants
If the reports coming from the
Arkansas Democrat Gazette are true, maybe the news that we had yesterday about
American Idol voting irregularities is meatier than we thought. One fan that says she voted for Kris Allen over 10,000 times.
It's also interesting that
Idol rules state that power texting, the kind of texting that AT&T reps showed Kris Allen fans how to do, is
against the rules. Isn't there some sort of built-in safety net for the voting? How can one fan vote over 10,000 times for one person? Shouldn't it be one person, one vote? Or one household, one vote? Or maybe one phone number, one vote? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the results. I have no idea. But it does seem that a better system could be in place.
Posted May 27th 2009 6:07PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: OpEd, American Idol, Alumni, Predictions and Trends, News and Gossip
Fans of Kris Allen feel justified that their favorite won
American Idol this year. Fans of the presumed favorite to win, Adam Lambert, have been lamenting his loss.
Looking for reasons why Adam lost, as Bob reported, they've put some of the blame on AT&T. I think it's more a matter of the jaded state of California, where Lambert hails from. They're not as impressed with a famous singer in their midst as the people of Kris Allen's Arkansas are.
People in the Midwest and South don't have celebrities around every corner, and we're not as "hard" as the East Coast. So we still get excited when a "hometown" boy or girl does good. Think back to Season Five when Katharine McPhee went "home" to Los Angeles to a crowd of hundreds while Taylor Hicks was blown away by tens of thousands in Alabama (and they already had one Idol!).
Continue reading Here's the real American Idol voting conspiracy
Posted May 27th 2009 12:33PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: American Idol, TV Squad Polls, Contestants, News and Gossip
So
Kris Allen beat Adam Lambert by a ton of votes last week. You knew there would be a controversy, right? This one is based around AT&T. Seems they might have pushed the results toward Allen by having their reps at parties organized by fans of Allen and teaching them how to "power text," which apparently means sending 10 or more text messages at once.
The New York Times has all the details.
Posted May 22nd 2009 12:27PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: American Idol, Celebrities, Contestants, Alumni
I am not going to pay $29.95 a year to read the blog entries of Clay Aiken. So I'm glad that someone else does and can post the following quote from Aiken. Guess the
American Idol runner-up isn't a fan of another runner-up, Adam Lambert.
I couldn't be happier with the way AI ended this year. I only turn the show on once a season and only to see what the set looks like. This year, I happened to turn it on during the minute that Adam Lambert was singing "Ring of Fire," and, at that moment, thought my ears would bleed. Contrived, awful, and slightly frightening! I wasn't really a fan and found myself surprised whenever folks told me that they liked him.
Gawker has more.
Idol fans, discuss.
Posted May 22nd 2009 10:14AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: American Idol, Subtle Subtitles, Reality-Free
If you haven't seen our game before, we give you a picture from a recent episode of a TV series and you provide the caption!
Last week we had a picture from the crazy season finale of
Lost. Our winner is
Ryan, with this caption:
"Sorry Ben, but the tribe has spoken and you're voted off the island."
This week it's a picture from the equally crazy finale of
American Idol, with Adam Lambert and friends.
Posted May 22nd 2009 9:05AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: American Idol, Watercooler Talk, Ratings, Judges
The week before the
American Idol gigantic-mahunga-godzilla two-hour-plus finale aired, Simon Cowell predicted it would be a
"ding-dong finale." Of course, that brilliant prognostication was hype personified, but Simon did his job. The finale drew 28.8 million viewers. Ironically, the buzz in the biz when those figures were revealed skewed it as a bad thing.
It was the lowest-rated American Idol finale ever. But it still drew a tremendous amount of eyeballs, so why is it being characterized as a flop?
The answer is simply this:
American Idol is competing with itself. It's expected to exceed its highs year after year, and generally speaking in television, that just doesn't happen. Older shows decline, and yes, even superhits like American Idol can't stay on top forever. Look at
ER or
CSI.
Continue reading American Idol's finale was a flop?
Posted May 21st 2009 11:03AM by Michael Pascua
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd, The Amazing Race, American Idol, The Apprentice, Survivor, Dancing With The Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, America's Got Talent
With the latest seasons of
Survivor,
The Amazing Race, and
American Idol wrapping up, fans patiently have to wait until the fall or spring 2010 for their favorite shows to return. But why wait? Several reality TV shows debut in the summer both as lighter fare than fall shows and a way to test for target audiences.
If one recalls, several summer reality TV shows have eventually moved to prime real estate in the fall or spring. If rumors are true the summer favorite
So You Think You Can Dance will be the next to move, airing in the summer and fall.
Here are some alternatives for your favorite reality TV shows.
Continue reading Summer reality TV alternatives
Next Page »
TV Squad previews NBC's new shows (part 1)
TV 101: How ESPN controls the world and what the other networks can learn from it
TV Squad previews CBS's new shows
