Last year's winner, Taylor Hicks was rockin' at tonight's Orange Bowl halftime show with Gladys Night.

Yep .....one day your on line for an audition for American Idol.......
Next your on stage all over the world ....go for your Dreams!
"God Bless America"

Hi,

Yep can't wait. Jan. 16th. I've picked the winner after the first round of cuts for the past two years in a row.

BTW Taylor's new CD is AWESOME!

TP123

reality. ha.

I love seeing unknown talent discovered & given the shot at a future in the business...its exciting ...can't wait for the new season to start!

Uncle Dave... U no like? Y?

Why? It's farse disguised as a competition. I hate the fact that they promote the "K" word over real musicianship, and they treat the audience as if we were stupid enough to believe that Simon is mean, Randy is cool, Paula is a ditz .... it's just fluff. It's boring to me, but if you and the millions of fans out there keep watching it - more power to ya. I tried a few episodes each season because my 13 yr old daughter likes it, but it always leaves me cold.

So, I put it in the trash heap with ALL other "reality" shows like Survivor, Biggest loser, Jerry Springer ..... the list is WAY too long to be accurate, but you can quote me as saying that the state of American made TV is very sad.

My guilty pleasure used to be the Gilmore Girls, but after season 6 when the real writers left the show ... it started to suck wind, big time. So far Season 7 has been a waste of time. Poorly written, boring and they have ruined a story that I used to like to follow.

We all have our favs ....... but reality and TV are mutually exclusive terms. I watch TV to get away from reality. I want entertainment, fun and creativity. I find none of that in Idol.

Sorry fans - just one man's opinion.

I was going to say something along the same lines as what UD said but held off. He is spot on.

To me, it is hardly anything to crow about and frankly, I'm surprised that any musicians embrace it. This is not how it should work. You have incredibly talented people who have busted their butts for MANY years. If you create a regional following, they find you, simple as that. If you don't create a significant regional buzz, you go nowhere. It's a brutal business and American Idol is injustice in a big way.

AI has created this idea that you just have to win a tv show and become the next giant star.

And then you have Carrie Underwood being awarded CMA Vocalist of the Year in her first year. I'd bet that's rigged. I'd bet it's part of her handler's marketing machine strategy.

As for Taylor Hicks, I just can't believe this guy can be marketable (in the real world) for today's record-buying public. The typical CD buyer is what... 12 to 18? I like him okay. For about one song.

The show is also another example of in-your-face tv. Let's see how sassy and rude we can be. It's all over tv.

JMO, I don't think it's any good for musicians or music. It's a manufactured marketing machine.

------------------
Bill
SmallGig.com

Ya cant argue with huge success.....dont forget also..... that Idol is not just in the USA it is a WORLD WIDE SUCESS in so many different countries.....

"Pop Idol was a British television series shown on ITV-1 in 2001; the show was a talent contest to find the best new young singer or ‘pop idol’ in the United Kingdom. The owners of Pop Idol, Fremantle Media and 19 Management, turned the show into a format and have since spun off Idols in dozens of successes such as American Idol, Canadian Idol, Indian Idol, Australian Idol, Indonesian Idol, Malaysian Idol, NZ Idol in New Zealand, Philippine Idol, France’s Nouvelle Star, Brazil’s Ídolos and Germany’s Deutschland Sucht den SuperStar. Regionally there has been Latin American Idol and Pan-Arabic Idol. There even was an international version among national winners from 11 countries as the
World Idol.

The Pan-Arabic Idol, produced by the Lebanese satellite channel Future TV, is one of the world’s most popular broadcasts in Arabic, sometimes pulling in more than 30 million viewers for the two-hour show. In many parts of Northern Africa where most households do not own TV sets, viewers collect at bars that have TV sets, such as the family of Medina Mohammed, a 17 year old student contestant who entered from the Afar region.

Pop Idol can be critiqued as Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, wrapped up in the shallow – indeed hollow nature of contemporary celebrity (in Britain the Celebrity Big Brother winner, Chantelle, was famous for not being famous).

SMLXL joined with TomiAhonen Consulting to analyze the Pop Idol viewing and voting of the 22 countries which had completed at least one full run of Pop Idol, and for which the viewing and voting data was available. These 22 countries cover a total of 560 million TV households. Out of the worldwide household count with TV sets of about 1.2 billion, it means that Pop Idols TV shows have been broadcast to 45% of households with a TV set.

In some of the countries Pop Idol has been run several times over the past five years. To eliminate double-counting of the same viewers from year to year, we took only the latest run of Pop Idol in any given country. Then by using the established rule of thumb for the Pop Idols TV format, that about 20% of the total series audience tunes in during the final, we arrived at a discrete audience of 215 million unique viewers. This is out of a total potential of 560 million households in the countries where Pop Idol has run. In other words the finals of Pop Idol have attracted viewers corresponding to 38% of all possible households.

Nobody can doubt the enormous appeal of this TV format. And just by its audience numbers and the resulting advertising sales to the show it is a global phenomenon. In America for example, for the latest finale they were selling ad spots at 1.3 million dollars per slot."