{"id":270,"date":"2010-01-12T13:03:39","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T19:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=270"},"modified":"2010-01-12T13:03:39","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T19:03:39","slug":"idols-new-season-starts-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/idols-new-season-starts-tonight\/","title":{"rendered":"Idol’s New Season Starts Tonight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>American Idol has been a huge success for the Fox TV network. Year after year at first place in the ratings, AI continues to dominate prime time TV. That kind of success yields substantial revenue. A 30-second spot on Idol nets Fox over $600,000. That and product placement deals with Coke, Ford, AT&T, iTunes and others makes this franchise a gold mine.<\/p>\n

Earlier today I asked my Media & Society students why they think American Idol is such a hit with viewers and they offered up several very insightful responses.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Viewers are able to participate in the potential rags-to-riches story line of contestants…seeing themselves as potentially rich and famous if they were just given an opportunity to compete.<\/li>\n
  2. We enjoy seeing people make fools of themselves on TV. The Germans have a word for it…schadenfreude, which is translated as pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.<\/li>\n
  3. The large contestant pool means that our social network may allow us to know someone who knows someone who is a contestant. The old six-degrees-of-separation meme strikes again!<\/li>\n
  4. And, the interactivity and audience participation provided by the text voting gives viewers\/voters a sense of ownership.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I think the students came up with some very compelling explanations for the success of American Idol. It will be interesting to see if that success continues. In case you haven’t heard, the big news this season is the planned departure of the acerbic Simon Cowell. Cowell reportedly turned down $144 million per year to stay. Time will tell just how much Simon’s biting commentaries will be missed by fans of the show. What do you think? Is this the beginning of the end for American Idol?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    American Idol has been a huge success for the Fox TV network. Year after year at first place in the ratings, AI continues to dominate prime time TV. That kind of success yields substantial revenue. A 30-second spot on Idol nets Fox over $600,000. That and product placement deals with Coke, Ford, AT&T, iTunes and … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Idol’s New Season Starts Tonight”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14,15,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-media-industry","category-music","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}