Last week, “American Idol” celebrated the crowning of its newest champion — while posting its worst ratings in the show’s 12 year history!
Thursday’s finale averaged a 3.4 rating among adults 18-49, which is a whopping 47% drop from last year’s final episode. What’s worse, “American Idol” was down 8 million among total viewers, to 13.6 million, which is the first time a finale has not reached the 20-million mark. Most viewers proved they’d rather catch the season finale of “Scandal” or Game 5 of the NY Knicks/Indiana Pacers semi-finals than the “Idol” competition.
The original vision of the show was to make stars out of unknowns. Although Season 1 winner Kelly Clarkson, Season 4 winner Carrie Underwood and cast-off Jennifer Hudson are perhaps the show’s biggest success stories, many more “winners,” including Season’s 7, 8 and 9 champs David Cook, Kris Allen and Lee DeWyze have been colossal flops.
At some point, “American Idol” became less about the contestants and more about the judges, with this year’s panel of Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban proving to be a huge distraction and unappealing to viewers. Also, NBC’s “The Voice” has completely trumped “Idol” as the talent show Americans would rather see. Although producers announced they intend to replace the entire panel of judges (again) next season, they seem clueless to the fact that the people sitting behind the table giving rambling commentary are the least of the show’s myriad of problems. It’s a classic case of “too little, too late.”
“Idol” enjoyed its heyday a decade ago, but has since become the last to know it’s a “has-been.” Although Candice Glover was the big Season 12 winner, the numbers clearly show Fox was the big Season 12 loser.
Let’s face facts — “American Idol” has run its course and no combination of judging panels will return it to its former glory. Or in other words, it’s time to put the rotting corpse of “American Idol” in the grave for good and let it rest on the memories of what it once was!
