news articles 25 october

[Inside Australian Idol]

Talent's a bore, bring on Young Tantrum Time
By Natasha Wallace
October 25, 2003

Young Talent Time, that sunny television show of the 1970s and '80s, just wouldn't get the viewers these days.

As Channel Ten's Australian Idol has shown, it's not only about singing talent. Tears, tantrums, abuse and humiliation - otherwise known as reality TV - are what many viewers crave these days.

Idol has over the past three months culled 10,000 wannabe pop stars vying for a record deal down to four.

As the stakes get higher and nerves fray ahead of judgement day - when the last two contestants compete at the Opera House on November 19 - the show has hit ratings nirvana with an audience of 2.1 million.

Monday night is the second-last "Live Verdict" show, where viewers vote for contestants via phone or SMS. Either Paulini, Shannon, Cosima or Guy will be shoved out of the limelight. The singers got just as many squeals from the crowd as the "real" pop stars on the ARIA awards' red carpet on Tuesday.

So, too, did the show's judges: the singer Marcia Hines, a songwriter/producer, Mark Holden, and the BMG executive Ian "Dicko" Dickson.

The latter two spice up the show by digging deep into the insult bag, reducing some contestants to tears.

Johnny Young wouldn't have dreamt of ridiculing Tina Arena and Dannii Minogue- at least, not on camera.

Pop Idol, a franchise manufactured by Spice Girls creator Simon Fuller and which draws on the Big Brother reality genre, was a huge success on its final nights in Britain and the US and looks set to be just as successful here.

Last Sunday night it lured 2.1 million viewers, up from 1.35 million two weeks earlier, making it the most-watched program that night and the third most-watched of the week in the major capitals.

That's quite a catch-up, after debuting on July 27 with 1.65 million viewers and sinking to 1.13 million three weeks later.

Last Monday night's Live Verdict show had 2.01 million viewers, up from the 1.47 million of the same show three weeks earlier.

The head of production at Ten, Stephen Tate, said it was difficult to discern exactly who was driving the voting but, with 60 per cent of votes registered via SMS, it was likely to be younger viewers.

"We imagine that the voting skews younger than the broad demographic [of 16 to 39],"he said.

Of women aged 16-24 watching television between 7.30 and 8.45 last Sunday night, 76.6 per cent tuned into Idol.

For men of the same age group, the figure was 66.4 per cent, and for 13 to 17-year-olds, it was 65.7 per cent.

The show was tapping into the armchair critic in everybody as it enters its final weeks, Mr Tate said.

"Together with the reality element it's a pretty heady cocktail for viewers," he said.

www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/24/1066974313299.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

Mark, you're out

October 25, 2003

Not since Tina Arena and Karen Dunkerton donned black veils and sang Fernando to a riveted Australian nation on Young Talent Time have we seen anything like Australian Idol (Ten, Sunday and Monday). There is little doubt that this will be the water cooler show of the year. People are talking about it like they haven't talked about a TV show in a long while.

What's more, people are now confessing they are late converts to the cause, tuning in because their workmates, flatmates and friends can't stop talking about it.

So, why? What has Australian Idol got that the others Popstars, Search for a Superbimbo, Starstruck and the rest didn't? The answer is probably heart, a little soul and a lot of Marcia Hines. It also probably helps that as the franchise enters its final phase, the ranks of potential stars have been culled to a handful of incredibly talented young people.

For a TV audience weaned on the mean-spiritedness of the cruel and unfriendly judgements in Popstars which deserves some acknowledgement for its role as the creative progenitor to Idol it is surprising that we have taken to our heart a show which seemed, at first at least, to have so many nice things to say.

In Monday's program, the compliments flowed thick and fast. "Sensational," declared Dicko. "Beautiful work," said Mark Holden. "One of those voices; it is the most beautiful instrument I have ever heard," decreed Hines. Easy, perhaps, when the talent is that good.

Of course, things came unstuck at the midpoint when Paulini's wardrobe and even worse, her curvy, sensual figure became the focal point of what erupted into a very loud and long media debate.

"What's with what you're wearing, girl?" Holden said, apparently doing his best impression of a black man. Yo dude, I yelled at my telly, you're a honky so how about you drop the jive speak and get real.

Dicko entered the debate with: "You should choose more appropriate clothes or shed some pounds." And from that point, all hell broke loose. The crowd, clearly displeased, gave Paulini, their favourite, a rousing ovation, talkback radio was crackling with opinion and counter-opinion and the media took its predictably PC pro-fat, anti-slim stance.

Now, don't get me wrong, the very suggestion that a man wearing a white suit with a black skivvy and a gold chain emblazoned with a dollar sign is in a position to judge anyone else's sense of fashion is laughable. We're not even going to mention that Holden's career is best summed up by a red carnation, a stint in The Young Doctors, writing songs for David Hasselhoff's Euro-pop career and managing someone called Vanessa Cabanossi. So, how are we spelling l-o-s-e-r today?

Dicko, on the other hand, does make a valid point. He's obviously good at what he does, and he clearly knows how music is marketed. What's more, he's honest enough to sit there without a rinse in his hair, and a wardrobe that looks like it hasn't seen the light of day since Bernard King wore it on Pot Luck.

If Delta Goodrem looked like Colleen McCulloch, do you really think she'd have more ARIA Awards than doors to stopper them with? Do people buy Kylie Minogue's CDs because she has a cute tushie, or because she is a singing talent without peer?

Marketing is the name of the game. Dicko knows it, and there are a few hard and fast realities about being an aspiring pop star in a fat man's ghetto.

Interestingly, when the series began it was somewhat lazily cloned on its American cousin, with Dicko playing the role of nasty Simon Cowell, Hines playing Paula Abdul and Holden stepping into Randy Jackson's shoes as third string. However, unlike Cowell, a British expatriate hated for turning up his nose at Americans, Dicko's honesty has resonated with his Australian audience.

Holden, on the other hand, seems to be mugging too hard for the camera. He spends too much time either taking cheap shots at the contestants, much to the obvious discomfort of Hines, who sits next to him, or trying his hand at a range of punchlines, from "hubba hubba" to "touchdown!".

Maybe it bums him out because no one has walked on stage in a white suit with a red carnation to sing I Wanna Make You My Lady? Or maybe he's bummed because no one has asked him to do it himself?

Either way, Australia has voted, kiddo. And Mark Holden is the weakest link. Goodbye.

www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/24/1066631621873.html