news articles 9 february

[Inside Australian Idol]

Wait for her Idol was well worth it
By KANE YOUNG
09feb04

THE thousands of fans who packed Hobart's Elizabeth Mall to see Shannon Noll yesterday left no doubt over who was their real choice for Australian Idol -- and Karissa Webster was leading the charge.

Karissa travelled all the way from New Norfolk in the early morning to be first in line for a much sought-after autograph.

Armed with her copy of Noll's What About Me single, she claimed her place at the head of the queue at 7.30am then sat and watched as a massive line formed behind her and snaked its way back through the mall.

Karissa, 16, said she caught a ride into the city with her father, who was on his way to work.

She said: "I didn't want to be at the back of the queue. He's just a good singer and he was my favourite Idol right through the show.

"He definitely should have won."

Karissa was not even born when the original version of What About Me was released in 1982.

"My mum has actually got a copy of the original, so I have heard it," Karissa said.

"But she likes the new version better."


www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,8625240%255E3462,00.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

What about 5000 then?
By KANE YOUNG
09feb04

SHANNON-MANIA swept through Hobart yesterday as 5000 screaming fans crammed Elizabeth Mall to catch a glimpse of Australian Idol star Shannon Noll.

The former farmer from Condobolin in rural New South Wales -- whose first single What About Me debuted at No. 1 on the national chart last week -- made his first visit to Tasmania to sing, sign, and launch his debut album That's What I'm Talking About.

Hard-core Shannon fans began arriving as early as 7.30am to get a good position.

By 11am hundreds of autograph-hunters -- mainly teenage girls -- had already joined the queue.

When Noll finally appeared on stage about 2.15pm the roar from the crowd was deafening and it didn't let up until he walked off less than 15 minutes later.

Noll performed two songs -- his popular cover of Moving Pictures' 1982 hit What About Me and his next single, the Bryan Adams-penned Drive -- which were barely audible over the screams of adoring fans.

He then spent the next three hours signing autographs at the rate of about 1000 an hour.

After finishing a close second behind Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian and the stunning launch of What About Me, Noll can hardly believe his meteoric rise to the top of the pops.

"The response has been amazing, I'm over the moon with it," he said. "I could never have dreamed that it was going to go like this."

The album That's What I'm Talking About is available in stores from today.

Noll decided to launch the album in Hobart after finishing the Australian Idol tour -- which didn't include Tasmania -- in Melbourne on Saturday night.

"I've never been down here before," he said. "I love the bush, and by the sound of it everyone down here does too, so it's great."

www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,8625250%255E3462,00.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

Shannon Noll Hot, Mercury 4 Not

Shannon Noll's version of Moving Pictures 'What About Me' has again topped the Australia singles chart this week, clocking up Gold plus sales of 44,591 last week and selling double platinum figures in just two weeks. Mercury 4 on the other hand has dropped after three weeks and sales of just 2,405 units.



The Big Mac factory that is Australian Idol has kids leaping for the five inch plastic souvenirs of the reality show stars quicker than you can say "would you like fries with than" but take away the 15 minutes of fame that comes with the TV show and the public just yawn.

Shannon Noll's single has sold 144,475 copies in two weeks. Mercury 4 has done only 7,924 in three weeks.

Shannon had a good lead over No. 2 from Kelis this week. Her 'Milkshake' sold 11.572 units on the ARIA singles chart.

Over at the album chart, Evanescence 'Fallen' was No.1 with 11,640 units and Incubus 'A Crow Left of the Murder' had an impressive debut at No. 2 after selling 10,458.

Australian acts in the Top 10 are Pete Murray 'Feeler' at number three (6,853 units), Jet 'Get Born' at number four (6,136 units) and Delta Goodrem 'Innocent Eyes' at number nine (4,949 units).

The Top 10 albums sold 66,022 copies last week, up from 59,096 last week and 55,658 two weeks ago.


By Paul Cashmere

www.undercover.com.au/news/2004/feb2004/20040209_shannonnoll.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

Losing their grip on reality
February 9, 2004
The Sun-Herald


TV bosses keep feeding our addiction to reality shows, but how much is too much, asks Brett Thomas.

Bottle blondes, fake suntans, six-pack stomachs, tension and tears. That looks to be the staple diet of television 2004 as Australian networks prepare to swamp us with an unprecedented number of high-stakes reality programs.

From home renovation contests to wannabe pop stars, big money cook-offs, filthy houses, personal makeovers and, well, lots more renovation contests, our TV screens are set to be awash with reality.

But with a desperate Channel Seven alone planning to unleash a dozen new reality shows this year, the genre which has taken the world by storm is risking its own call of "It's time to go ..." as programming rapidly approaches saturation point.

Already, the new year in reality is off to a shaky start with Channel Ten's much ballyhooed nightly renovation show The HotHouse failing to attract the audience numbers network bosses were hoping for.

And series two of Channel Nine's hit of last year, The Block, has been mired in unwanted controversy about a now ex-contestant's criminal past even before a single episode has been aired.

Last year provided reality's moment of glory, with seven programs included in the top 20 highest-rating shows of the year, as collated by OzTAM.

The final episodes of Ten's Australian Idol and Nine's The Block were second and third behind Seven's Rugby World Cup final, attracting national audiences of 3.3 million and 3.1 million respectively.

In 2002, only four such programs made the top 20 and they were all episodes of Ten's waning Big Brother franchise. The series' final episode was the highest placed at No. 5 with 2.3 million viewers.

If the television industry is good at one thing, it's the shameless copying of successful ideas and formats, especially when, like reality, they're relatively cheap to produce and highly attractive to advertisers and viewers alike.

The $2.5 billion in advertising revenue jointly collected by the commercial networks last year is expected to grow to almost $3 billion in 2004, a big chunk of that coming from successful reality shows.

So for Seven, eager to regain the ground it has lost to its two commercial rivals, reality is the spearhead of its 2004 charge, with programs like My Restaurant Rules, Popstars Live, The Simple Life, What Not To Wear, How Clean Is Your House and How To Become Famous In Two Weeks Or Less all scheduled to air this year.

On Nine, we'll see American shows Survivor: All-Stars, Paradise Hotel, Extreme Makeover and The Joe Schmo Show, along with the return of local legend The Block.

At Ten, Big Brother 4 and Australian Idol 2 will lead the way, along with The HotHouse, The Resort and a home-grown version of the successful American import Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.

Despite the apparent overkill, most commentators were reluctant to write off the reality genre just yet.

"Every time we think people are over them, the new ones appear and many of them do well," Jane Roscoe, head of screen studies at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, said.

"I'd be surprised if all of them do well [this year] but there will be some winners."

Toni Johnson-Woods, lecturer in contemporary studies at the University of Queensland and author of a book about the Big Brother phenomenon called Big Bother, said the saturation point for reality shows was approaching.

She added, however, that some shows - such as Survivor - were smart enough to continually reinvent themselves and stay fresh, keeping audiences interested year after year.

"We've always got to have gladiatorial sport for the masses, we've always got to have bread and circuses," she said. "It has to be kind of mindless because it appeals to certain sections of the audience and it's easy TV.

"I don't think we get the TV we deserve, I think we make choices that are foisted upon us.

"Unfortunately, we don't turn off and pick up a book because when you come home from work you don't want to think."

Don Chalke, social analyst for Quantum Market Research, said the only factor determining the success or failure of reality television was the quality of the shows.

"If they're good, we love them," he said. "If they're not, we won't watch."

Chalke said the reality TV boom was underpinned by a long-term social movement in which people had changed focus from greater global issues to ordinary people and issues closer to home.

"Reality TV is about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and you engage with them for whatever reason," he said. "It's just like a soap opera using non [Actor's] Equity members.

"It works because people now are focused on a village community - my neighbourhood, my main street. We're more interested in real people like us and when you watch TV you suspend belief sufficiently to see all these beautiful, carefully cast people as real.

"This trend has been running for seven, eight, nine years and they [reality TV producers] have just jumped on the bandwagon."

While reality TV has connected with a huge audience, it doesn't mean it's particularly good for us and an increasing number of extreme versions of the genre are threatening the success of brand-name shows such as Survivor, the various international Idols and Big Brother.

In England there have been complaints about a show called Shattered which featured a contest to see who could survive sleep deprivation the longest. The eventual winner lasted 178 hours on almost no sleep.

Last week, Sky TV paid damages to six male contestants of another show called There's Something About Miriam when the contestants discovered the woman they were all wooing was, in fact, a transsexual.

In the US, there has been outrage over a show called The Littlest Groom in which a dwarf is forced to choose between female dwarfs and normal-sized women.

So far, none of those programs is scheduled to be shown in Australia.

It is the dating sector of the reality genre - shows such as The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Joe Millionaire - that causes academics most concern.

"Ideologically, they are conservative and backward programs," Dr Roscoe said.

www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/08/1076175021574.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

Idol Worship
No, American Idol doesn't teach good values because it forces singers into a mould dictated by the judges

By Tan Shzr Ee

I CONFESS: American Idol truly amazes me.

Not for its surfeit of talent - though to be sure, there is a lot of it on the show and judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson have reason to celebrate.

I'm more surprised that it has managed to keep audiences hooked onto a third season with the predictable 'everywhere-ness' of this talent.

Yes, that almost Celine Dionesque power-belting, glistening with the same nail-varnish gloss whether you're doing country, soul or R&B.

It is that over-performed, over-mainstream and over-extrovert mode of rendition that leaves no room for introspection or quirky personality.

It makes caricatures of cultural differences.

The judges may offer pithisms about the singularity of certain voices, but everyone really sounds the same. Oops, correction: Everyone is made to sound the same, delivering pre-packaged performances on the silver platter of music-industry grooming.

Consider a list of real idols who would probably be kicked out the first round for the inability to make this ideal template.

1. Stefanie Sun: Because she has a hunched, mousy presence. And much as her voice is gorgeous in the studio, she can't stay in tune, live.

2. Astrud Gilberto: Because she gurgles, off-key, and has the personality of a bored housewife.

Which is absolutely true, of course, except that this no-name Brazilian was discovered by the 'white man' only because she left her home country and had nothing to do while accompanying her husband, Joao, to accent-hungry America.

3. The Rolling Stones: Because the stars are too old and there are too many frays in their booze-soaked voices.

4. Norah Jones: Don't know why, but maybe that whitewashed whine of hers isn't going anywhere without curdling backup and amplification.

5. The divine Ms Bjork, because of her, well, weird image.

And what's with that breathy, mind-wrenching squealing which pretends basic concepts of melody and rhythm do not exist?

6. Billie Holliday: With a rasp like hers, Cowell will be sending her 10 years' worth of Strepsils.

7. Stevie Wonder: Because he's blind and can't read the music score/lyric sheet.ALL right, all right - maybe I've got the American Idol industry all wrong in the first place.

Nobody said originality was going to be celebrated.

It's better to sing covers that the public can connect with straight away.

It's about finding the perfect match of exhibitionism in fame-hungry kids who value 'making it big' more than singing, with the unembarrassed voyeur you find in reality TV, and in yourself (this writer included).

Finally, who's to accuse anyone of a hostile takeover of culture in the music industry?

It is called American Idol, after all, not Icelandic, Bornean or Croatian Idol.

Although, of course, the show was first born in England as Pop Idol, the brainchild of tart-tongued British critic Cowell, who exported it almost immediately to the Land Of The Freeee.

The politics are simple: The world's most economically advantaged melting-pot (melting into what - porridge?) community wants to build a template of an ideal totem to be worshipped universally.

Idols aren't real but representative.

They deliver stylised and reductive messages of 'goodness' and 'success'.

Worshippers make offerings of flowers and TV ratings, plus corresponding ad-endorsement and record-industry spin-offs, at their altars.

If you really think about it, Americans have always needed these larger-than-life figureheads.

Like Elvis Presley. Like The Rock.

It is the sugar-coated cream and luxury of packaging and showmanship that is lapped up everywhere - which can be good in itself, especially if you are deluged with the information explosion of the Internet age when you try to make up your mind yourself on anything.

But the question is: Does the rest of the world need an American Idol too?

Australia has already launched its own version of the programme, finding its answer in Malaysian-born Guy Sebastian, who is as African-American as they come as he can really deliver Soul.

The spin-off extravaganza, World Idol, with its glamour-bitching catalogue of weird accents, crowned Norwegian (who?) Kurt Nielsen the new, um, superstar.

One wonders what will happen in Singapore later this year, when the conglomerate finally starts a franchise here.

Will we find a new Stefanie or a neo-A-Do? Or a racially-correct copy of Britney?

Or - I pray to God for this - a William Hung of She Bangs fame, who barely but actually did stay in tune, if only compromised by weak voice projection and his ultra-nerdy image.

I laughed and cried myself to tears at the sight of the courageous civil engineer.

But he did, if you recall, remember all his words.

And more than anything else, I am proud of his unembarrassed sincerity, wearing on his sleeve his Hong Kong accent, his Ricky Martin-meets-Aaron Kwok earnestness, and his simple 'I have no regrets' repartee to rejection.

It's all in learning where to draw the line between cultural context and cultural cliche, so they say.

And if one interesting phenomenon is happening as a result of American Idol, it is the blurring of this line.

Now that the show is entering the semi-final stage, I'm switching off the TV.

Who needs to catch the same kind of people singing the same kind of songs a third time?

There have always been talentime shows; there have always been mass-produced singers, bona-fide artists and lucky stars.

I don't need reality TV as determined by music moguls to show me that.

But you can bet I will rush home early to catch the next round of preliminaries on American Idol 4 and Singapore Idol - if only to celebrate the individuals who were never meant to be Idols.

Bravo to them - and to reality TV.

straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/life/story/0,4386,234195,00.html

[Inside Australian Idol]

Idol Worship
By HELMI YUSOF

Yes, reality show American Idol is a show that can be encouraged, if only for the fact that it teaches reality to youngsters who live in a protected world


IT IS not hard to see why so many teens are hooked on reality-TV show American Idol.

For youngsters unacquainted with big disappointments, dashed hopes and shattered ambitions - in the way that many grown-ups are - the show presents some harsh realities.

So, you may think you can sing but the world - as represented, for better or worse, by three industry-weary veterans - may flatly disagree.

You may think you have an okay face and your white cotton shirts look sensible, but these won't stop judge Simon Cowell from saying you look like a pen salesman.

You may think you are limber and can pull off some slick dance moves.

But when judge Randy Jackson's face crumples just before he breaks into incredulous laughter, you are instantly deflated.

Friends and relatives may have said 'cute', 'above average', 'not bad at all' or 'come sing at my cousin's wedding'. But why does Paula Abdul fix only a look of painful pity on you?

I can imagine some of the contestants - whose hot tears were milked unapologetically by the cameras for dramatic effect - at home afterwards, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and asking: 'Why am I not good enough' or 'What's wrong with me?'

I asked myself that too, a dozen times in fact, when my first relationship ended abruptly.

It's a question a man, whom I interviewed last year for a story on retrenchment, asked me because he could not secure a job after a nine-month-long search.

It's a question a middle-aged engineer I know, who hasn't been promoted for the past seven years, asks himself once in a while.

Welcome to the real world - and this is why I think American Idol may be the best thing on TV for teens right now.

It gives them a better sense of reality than most bubblegum or fantasy-filled shows like Beverly Hills 90210 or Roswell.

Teen movies and boyband music, with their bland formulaic idiocy, don't do any better.

Parents and teachers always make a big fuss about educating kids about sex, but not many talk about the knowledge a child needs to be equipped with when overcoming his first heartbreak, learning how nasty the world is, or dealing with the patent unfairness of life that seemingly blesses some kids with so much more than others.

American Idol 3 is also extremely family-oriented.

In its first four episodes, when a contestant succeeded or failed to get into the next round, the first pair of arms he leaped joyfully or stumbled tearfully into outside the audition room was a family member's.

And if American Idol 2 is anything to go by, reality in fact has only truly shown its face when the contest is over and the winners are announced.

If you've been tracking the careers of last year's winner Ruben Studdard and runner-up Clay Aiken, you'll know what I mean.

African-American Studdard may have charmed the judges and millions of viewers with his modest demeanour and velvety voice.

But his singing career now seems headed to Nowheresville, while pretty white boy Aiken's first single and debut album have been fast outselling Studdard's.

Could there be a better way of teaching kids that life has this funny way of playing tricks on you?

It would seem as if the American Idol stage is a lot more merciful, even with all that sniping from the judges, than the real world.

At least on stage, an overweight black boy with extraordinary pipes rose to the top because he was clearly the most talented.

I trust the judges to pick the best singers, regardless of race and body shape.

Studdard weighs 195kg while Aiken was a skinny bespectacled dork at the start of the contest.

In this latest season, a midget, a few pimply nerds, a tomboy, a handful of overweight kids and a disproportionate number of African-Americans made it to the preliminary rounds.

It helps, I think, that the judges are Jackson, an African-American; Cowell, a Caucasian; and Abdul, an American of French-Canadian and Brazilian-Syrian parentage.

I wonder if the show would have been as interesting for me if the panel was comprised mostly of white judges - like those on that annoying reality show Are You Hot?

At any rate, the appearance of such a diverse group of teens on a hit TV show is a big improvement from countless teen shows and movies featuring almost exclusively white and attractive youngsters doing little else but fall in and out of love.

American Idol sends the right signals to teenagers that the world can be a stage for everyone.

Yeah, yeah, if you want to be rigorous about it, you could probably argue that American Idol is no less artificial and contrived than any other TV show coming out of the US.

Still, when teenagers tune in, they see pretty honest television.

I see the same too.

straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/life/story/0,4386,234195,00.html