Hacker Cinema
American Idol
2002 · TV series · 85 min episodes · 15 seasons
Created by Simon Fuller
Each year, hopeful singers from all over the country audition to be part of one of the biggest shows in American television history. Who will become the new American Idol?
5 negative17 neutralfrom 22 commenters
Where to watch
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22 comments on Hacker News
> I still remember the Paula Abdul office background poster
I don't understand this reference and Google leaves me totally blank here. I could ask you to clarify, but there is the chance you don't see it or dont reply so … ChatGPT to the rescue?
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Prompt: What was the Paula Abdul office background poster controversy?
ChatCPT: The Paula Abdul office background poster controversy refers to a incident that occurred during a live episode of "American Idol" in 2009, when fans noticed a poster hanging on the wall behind Paula Abdul's desk during her pre-taped video segments. The poster, which appeared to be of a semi-nude woman, caused a stir among viewers and led to accusations that Abdul was promoting sexual objectification.
Abdul and the show's producers initially denied that the poster existed, but later issued a statement acknowledging its presence and stating that it was not intentionally visible during the broadcast. They also apologized to viewers who may have been offended by the poster.
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This does sound plausible … But wait! Is this truly true or just hallucinated?
Googling "Paula Abdul American Idol" just finds countless gossip posts about an alleged affaire with ex-contestant Corey Clark, but nothing about a poster.
While I find some of the points this article is making to be valid, I also find its deeply cynical take hard to swallow.
I would prefer to look for the nuance, the diamonds in the rough, and not write off a vast body of (in my view) highly valuable content, just because in later years the output quality of the platform deteriorated. (The latter point being one I don't disagree with).
Firstly, too much weight seems to be being given to the "ideas" part of "Ideas worth spreading". The best TED talks are not just about ideas. Many of the most engaging and inspiring talks are retrospectives on what individuals and teams have done. In fact I'd argue that the most valuable TED talks are about conclusions formed from decades of research, or exciting technological advancements made through thousands of hours of deep work and experimentation.
In other words, they are often talks about about consistent, dedicated execution, as much as they are about ideas.
Like all new ideas, some will have potential and continue to develop, others will not. Some things will come to fruition sooner, others will take vastly longer than expected. This is the nature of progress.
The author seems to think that just because someone presents an idea, or some work that they've been doing, that this somehow constitutes some form of "promise" that can be broken or not delivered on in the future. And if that assumed promise is subsequently broken, this invalidates the whole work and renders the originator of that idea a charlatan.
Rather I prefer to think of it like this; we are watching people who are excited and passionate about their work, who have a sense of belief and conviction in the value of what they're doing. Every truly great (and truly bad) idea throughout time has been presented in this way. Some ideas have legs, others don't. As consumers of content, whether books, online talks, articles, we are not meant to be passive and switch off our critical thinking apparatus. When consuming such material, we should be cognisant of the fact that - of course - the speaker, or author is going to be the strongest, most vocal evangelist for their work.
No one would do anything if they didn't believe in what they were doing.
Some specifics from the article:
> Of course, Gates’s popular and well-shared TED talk — viewed millions of times — didn’t alter the course of history. Neither did any of the other “ideas worth spreading”..
I find the writing off of Gates' pandemic talk baffling. Whatever you think of Gates, I don't really understand the conclusion the author is leading us to here. Are we saying that Gates shouldn't have bothered doing such a talk? That the 43M viewers of that talk left it with their thinking about the risk of worldwide pandemics totally unchanged? Perhaps they would have been better off spending that 10 minutes watching American Idol?
> including Monica Lewinsky’s massively viral speech about how to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy
How to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy. Are we suggesting that fewer people talking about this would be better?
> it feels like we are living in a reality that is the exact opposite of the future envisioned that year. A president took office in part because of his talent for online bullying.
In my view, the logic (or lack of) behind this flow of arguments is rather nonsensical.
I think there is some truth in what the author is saying elsewhere in the article, but for me it's marred by the somewhat irrational points like the above, and difficult to therefore take seriously as a whole.
I could say more about why I think we shouldn't write of TED talks fully and unequivocally, but instead, here are some of my all time favourites. Each one of these are superb and well worth watching. The nature of the medium means that the talks can't go deep into their subjects, and are generally a means to introduce people to ideas and concepts that they may want to follow up on and research further, if so inspired.
There are many more than the few listed below.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - "Flow, the secret to happiness"
https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_secret_to_happiness
Chris Hadfield - "What I learned from going blind in space"
https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_hadfield_what_i_learned_from_going_blind_in_space
Martin Seligman - "The new era of positive psychology"
https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_the_new_era_of_positive_psychology
Carol Dweck - "The power of believing that you can improve"
https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve
Malcolm Gladwell - "Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce"
https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_choice_happiness_and_spaghetti_sauce
Tim Urban - "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator"
https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator
Stephen Hawking - "Questioning the universe"
https://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_hawking_questioning_the_universe
Reggie Watts - "Beats that defy boxes"
https://www.ted.com/talks/reggie_watts_beats_that_defy_boxes
Tim Ferriss - "Why you should define your fears instead of your goals"
https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_ferriss_why_you_should_define_your_fears_instead_of_your_goals
I wonder how it would work on popular TV shows like American Idol. Maybe it is not in the interest of the broadcaster that the voters get less frustrated/angry with the outcome?
ALL of the chefs on Top Chef are professionals. All of them. That's the point of the show.
NONE of the singers on the Voice are professionals. That's also the point of the show.
The bigger point that clearly wasn't understood is that celebrity and success aren't mutually inclusive when it comes to cooking or music. You can be a successful chef that isn't on Top Chef just as you can be a successful voice that never goes on American Idol. In fact MOST people successful in both realms will never ever be on even a local TV show.
FISA warrants and NSLs are "following the letter of the law", too. You don't think they're subject to egregious abuse?
As for what the "majority of people" find reasonable, all I have to do is look at the polling numbers in the current presidential race to find myself in abject disgust at what the "majority of people" appear to think. They seem not to give half a shit what happens to anyone else, as long as they can watch the next episode of American Idol without fear of "getting blowed up by terr'ists" — despite the fact that more people have won the lottery than have died from terrorism in the US since September 11th.
EDIT: Anyway, there's nothing new or informative to be found in this discussion. We disagree. Let's leave it at that.
this isn't CIA-specific -- the DoD takes an extremely active part in culture-shaping. anytime you see US military hardware or personnel in a film or TV show, it has to be run by the DoD PR for review and editing to promote an 'acceptable' view of the military -- even for things as trivial as American Idol[0].
Americans by and large absorb what is within the bounds of acceptable political thought from mass media. What you don't see are the hands behind the scenes sculpting our culture.
[0] http://www.salon.com/2015/07/31/youre_watching_pentagon_propaganda_american_idol_ice_road_truckers_and_the_truth_about_your_favorite_shows/
Alternatively you could interpret American Idol as people spending one day a year pursuing an unlikely dream of lavish wealth before going back to the couch to see how the few contestants that made it through get on :)
I'm not sure "practising for reality TV shows" falls into the category of self-actualisation I'm particularly keen to uproot the economy as we know it to fund.
The irony that you chose American Idol as the TV show is delightful. It's a prime example of people often from impoverished background trying to better them selves rather than sitting around doing nothing :)
Not sure american idol the best example. Don't the "winners" usually get signed on the judges labels? Simon Cowell does this, it's really pretty brilliant. get paid to make them popular via the TV show, get paid producing the albums after you make them a star. If you squint your eyes right, all those contestants are getting angel funding, the top 12 get VC funding and the winner gets an IPO. The producers lose a little money at the angel level, break even to decent money at the mid tier, and rake in some serious dough once the album comes out.
I get your point, but you should pick a contest that isn't hit driven like VC money is. Starting a company isn't like the Olympics, for sure.
There have been some non-trivial successes in this department, like "Pioneer One": http://vodo.net/joshbernhard/pioneerone/
How many great artist[1] make a lot of money from their work while they are alive? How many make a lot of money for their label (alone, or in aggregate)?
I'm not afraid of artists stopping to create, and I'm not too terrified of a future without projects like the Lord of the Rings-films (note that the books were a work of passion, and not a main source of income -- which might be considered a bad thing, but also illustrates that people will do what can -- as long as they have some free time at their disposal). Or without TV shows like "(American) Idol".
There's an aspect of being dependent on commercial success that tends to shape what art is made -- a sinister form of self censorship. So it is not just the business model that is under attack -- but also the constraints under which artists work. People will disagree if this is a good or bad thing -- but it should probably be a part of the debate (who should have the resources to create art, and what art should they be making? Do we really think the invisible hand is the best judge of what makes good visual art?).
[1] Great art and great artists is of course highly subjective. I'm thinking of people like Townes Van Zandt, Phil Ochs, or various blues/jazz legends -- people generally highly regarded in their field, but that in spite of having published through established channels have not had commercial "success".
Isn't everything in the media designed to manipulate our emotions? I mean, those commercials to sponsor children in Africa, trying to make you feel guilty, and how for just the price of your morning coffee you can keep Timmy off the streets, and eating well?
You can argue FB relies on user content, but then I can compare that to reality TV shows, and how they'll take real-life footage, and manipulate it to trigger emotions.
For example, American Idol will paint a picture of someone struggling their whole life, and how this is their one opportunity for success after being fired from McDonalds and having their cat pass away. Then just as you're feeling sorry, they light up the stage, and you rejoice. Meanwhile, they forgot to tell you that person had professional training twice a week for the past 10 years, they won two other singing competitions earlier in the year, and live in a beautiful neighborhood, but that doesn't play into the emotions they want you to feel, and that doesn't get you to watch next week.
Or a show like Survivor, and how they'll take footage, and try to fabricate relationships and drama out of thin air. This way you become angry towards one character that'll be in the finale, and are likely to tune in to ensure they don't win.
Why can't Facebook do the same? Why can't they analyze and manipulate user emotions to increase business?
You may have some specific conditions for what you consider innovation, but Facebook is a service that dramatically changes how a significant percentage of humans spend their free time, and the implications are huge. Connecting with people, sharing information, etc. The fact that the business model is backed by advertising isn't relevant. By your definition I wonder if TV, film, or even the printing press is innovative.
American Idol was also innovative, and whatever group created the spectacle of the Superbowl and the NFL were also likely innovators. Just because it isn't hardcore technology doesn't mean it isn't innovative.
Breaking Bad is a TV show. American Idol is also a TV show.
However, Breaking Bad is not American Idol.
I'm not going to go look for the actual contract, but there has been controversy about the American Idol contract for years. Out of all the shows you could have picked, why would you pick one involving recording companies? :)
Here's a excerpt from the American Idol Wikipedia page, talking about the contract:
"The contract the contestants are required to sign gives Simon Fuller's company the right to oversee not just the recording deal for "American Idol" stars, but also control any merchandising, touring, sponsorship and movie deals."
"It evolved" is a reasonable excuse for an 0.7 product, or an ecosystem like the Internet, where no single entity is in control.
But when you've gone through 5 major versions over a decade, I don't think you can say, "Well gosh, it jes' growed that way." That takes it from "evolved" to "poorly planned".
Also, I wouldn't lean too hard on "most popular". Bud Light is the most popular beer and American Idol is the most popular TV show. "PHP: The Bud Light of programming languages" is not really helping your case.
The problem is that marketing is still what drives big numbers to watching a show. Lots of money is spent so that people know when the premiere and finale of each show is, every season. When shows are sold internationally, it's the local distributor who puts up the money to do all of the local marketing and slots in a local TV channel or other distribution. If a show was made everywhere internationally, the local distributor would miss out on the ability to monetize that viewer, since they went to the US site and watched it there. Some of the youngest, savviest audiences (ie the most valuable) would be lost.
This would go away if it was possible to synchronize broadcast episode schedules in all target markets, but that's almost impossible due to local differences. Also, it would mean that shows need to air the same time, and TV shows are really risky. Nobody is going to put up shows for international distribution until they've seen how it does in the US first.
This can also go away if a show goes exclusively pay-per-episode. This would only work for certain shows (can't see this for American Idol, but maybe for Breaking Bad), and only if streaming numbers were huge. Right now, they're pretty small. Hulu gets 6-7mm unique viewers per month across all of their content. It's safe to assume even a popular TV show is only going to get a few hundred thousand at the most. Breaking Bad's finale received 1.9mm TV viewers, so it's still TV that's driving scale. For more popular shows like Big Bang Theory, it's a few times that.
Very exciting times, but it will take a while. It was only in 2011 when we got services like Spotify broadly available for music, even though iTunes launched in 2001. Ten years to shift the consumer habits (ownership of bits; legacy of plastic CDs), industry thinking (signing the big 4; establishing royalty structures), and technical availability (3G/4G widely avail). Hulu launched publicly in 2008, so I'm looking forward to 2018.
Louie is a surprisingly good show. I think I like it for the same reasons I like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, which is it sticks out from the rest of tv (American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Bones, House, Law and Order, etc.) I think what's nice is that its not just another over used trope, spin off, sequel, trilogy, reproduction--it's original. I especially enjoyed the episode with his mom. The authors arguments are really interesting and I tend to agree with her. There are flaws in everything though.
"A good idea for a movie doesn't mean it's a good movie. A bad idea for a movie doesn't mean it's a bad idea."
This is exactly what I meant when I said that the quality of an idea is a marginal factor in the success of an endeavor. I fully agree that execution should be the main focus.
What I was trying to say is that not all ideas are equal. You can always make a worse movie with a better idea, or vice versa, but some ideas are easier to pull off than others. Given the exact same level of execution, "Batman fights the Joker" will beat "Random nobody in Nebraska sits in the dark eating cereal" every single time.
If all ideas are of equal quality, why would Hogan's Heroes be an excellent example? Wouldn't all examples then be equally good or bad?
Hogan's Heroes is an excellent example precisely because the idea is harder to pull off than other ideas. If you gave Hogan's Heroes and American Idol each to 100 teams to turn into a show, I believe American Idol would become a hit with greater frequency than Hogan's Heroes.
>> Providing content with embedded advertising
Also in-program advertising, as was classicly shown in The Truman Show and as seen nowadays with the gratuitous Coke cups used on American Idol.
As for the networks being redundant, yes and no. Yes in the distribution sense, but certainly not in the production stage. On-line distribution may be easy (for varying levels of "easy"), but someone's still gotta put up the money, organization, time, and physical plant to write and film the show, and keep it going for a while until it gets popular.
I've been through several phases in regards to TV.
When I was younger, I enjoyed following a lot of shows and comparing notes with my friends. Then I got older and found I had a few favorite shows that I watched whether friends were watching them or not.
I then went through a phase where I felt TV was important for cultural intelligence -- knowing what's popular and what isn't. Sort of a cheap way to fit in with popular society without actually having to meet people.
Then I went through a History Channel/Science kick. I found you could watch all kinds of cool science-related stuff on cable almost ad-infinitum. Curious as to what the world would look like if people disappeared? Cable's got that. Want to know the role of tanks in WWI? Cable's got that too.
It was all kinds of stuff that appeared to have some science value. I could justify it by saying, "Hey, I'm learning important facts about the migratory patterns of African Swallows here."
For the last couple of years I've been in the "I control the input" stage. That is, I watch only things that I have planned to watch ahead of time and only on Tivo/DVD. I hardly ever watch "unprotected" TV -- just me and the remote.
Finally, because of this board, I've decided to cut out TV entirely except for movie-watching every other weekend or so. After a couple of months of doing this, I can attest that it is one of the better decisions I've made in my life -- assuming I can keep it up.
TV is just so much bullshit. All of those years, and all of those tens of thousands of hours, accomplished me exactly nothing. I'm not even sure they were relaxing as much as it was simply anesthetizing. TV watching for peer groups was great if you wanted to fit into peer groups that chatted about American Idol. Favorite shows became dated. Cable was just a big time suck -- like one of those bug zappers except for idle minds. Pop science is eye candy and over-generalizations. In fact, the conclusion I reached is that TV is something where you will automatically find some kind of reason for watching whether it really provides value or not. It was all just rationalization.
When I stopped watching TV I had an awful thought -- what would I do now? I was used to feeling just slightly bored and pushing a button and being entertained. I had been trained that feeling bored was somehow abnormal, instead of a natural impulse that makes people do new things.
If you spent ten thousand hours staring at a stump there would be something wrong with you. But you can take that same time and watch all the episodes of the popular shows for the last ten years and accomplish exactly the same thing: nothing. And by doing that somehow that makes you "normal"
Let's have a TV show, I think in the US they are called "American Idol"? In Germany we have "Germany's Next Topmodel" and "Germany's next Superstar", both concepts could be easily extended into a show that portrays the making of a HackStar.
Interestingly, another thing TV has done to adapt is create content that expires very quickly. Reality shows like American Idol and Big Brother are unlikely to end up downloaded, because they're not worth watching if you don't watch them right away.
This is probably a huge component in why there are so many more reality shows these days.
Breaking the broadcast model also won't work for those, because their value is precisely in the fact that a lot of people watch them, so that they become gossip points. I know some people who watch reality shows only because they know that's what will be discussed around the water fountain the next day, and so they want to be sure to be "in".
I agree that that's a pretty small niche to fit all of today's TV industry, though.