History FranchiseOriginalSin / AmericanIdol

There were many reasons why ''Series/AmericanIdol'' flew off the rails in the later seasons... and looking back, one can see that most of them were there almost from the start.

From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/american-idol-winner-south noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (twelve out of nineteen, rising to thirteen if one counts Missouri, the home of season 7 winner David Cook, as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, including the South's music tradition, distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, and [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or Music/JohnMayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The incident in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to keep the show relevant against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.

From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/american-idol-winner-south noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (twelve out of nineteen, rising to thirteen if one counts Missouri, the home of season 7 winner David Cook, as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, including the South's music tradition, distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, and [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The incident in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to keep the show relevant against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.

From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/american-idol-winner-south noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (twelve out of nineteen, rising to thirteen if one counts Missouri, the home of season 7 winner David Cook, as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, including the South's music tradition, distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, and [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The incident in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.

From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/american-idol-winner-south noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (twelve out of nineteen, rising to thirteen if one counts Missouri, the home of season 7 winner David Cook, as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, including the South's music tradition, distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, and [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The incident in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic|s}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.
* Another factor that bedeviled ''Idol'' during its run, one that was closely linked to the above, was the fact that its boom years coincided with the rise of the Internet, which the show's creators never really figured out how to properly interact with. In the first couple of seasons, when most households still only had dial-up (if anything) and UsefulNotes/WebTwoPointOh was still barely a blip on the radar, this wasn't an issue. However, ''Idol'' continued to ignore the internet at its peril, which caused two critical problems:
##First, it isolated the show from a new generation of young people, who engaged with social media at a far greater rate than their predecessors. Without a serious online presence even in the '10s, the show may as well have not existed to them except as something that their parents watched. As a result, the average viewer age [[http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/01/07/american-idols-audience-ages-remains-the-current-ratings-monster/ slowly crept up]] from 31 in the first season to 44 in the eighth to [[http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/explaining-decline-american-idol-fox-article-1.2222577 51 in the twelth]] (i.e. outside the 18-49 demographic), and the show's most successful finalists increasingly began to reflect the tastes of the show's older voters even though they saw little pop stardom afterwards.

When Vote for the Worst bowed out in 2013, its creator [[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/idol-worship/american-idol-vote-worst-shutting-412138 stated outright]] that it was because he felt that [[ButNowIMustGo the site's work was done]] when it came to bringing down ''Idol'' and eroding its relevance in pop culture, but also noted that the site was merely a culmination of all the rotten trends that had been plaguing the show for years. In addition to serving as a reflection of the show's problems in favoring "white guys with guitars", Vote for the Worst was also a textbook example of a catastrophic, slow-motion failure in managing audience reaction in the age of the internet -- the show's producers [[http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2007/04/the_founder_of_.html openly dismissed]] the site during the height of the show's run, only acknowledging its impact once it became too great to ignore and was seriously affecting voting patterns and the show's reputation.

There were many reasons why ''Series/AmericanIdol'' flew off the rails in the later seasons... and looking back, most of them were there almost from the start.

* [[http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/wimpy-white-dudes-with-guitars-ruined-american-idol-1703735120/ This article]] from Maura Johnston of ''The Concourse'', analyzing the show's decline over the course of its run, points to a number of events in the earlier, popular seasons that foreshadowed how, in later seasons, the show and its voters would increasingly fall out of touch with the pop music mainstream. The ShockingElimination of Music/JenniferHudson very early in season 3 -- and her going on to have [[TheRunnerUpTakesItAll the biggest career out of anyone that season]] -- is regarded as the first crack, especially given the allegations that her elimination was due to racial bias (Hudson being a Black RAndB singer). The true tipping point, however, was the victory of Taylor Hicks in season 5. Hicks, a blue-eyed {{soul}} singer whose style couldn't have been more different from contemporary pop music trends, won largely due to the show's older voters who rejected said modern pop, and sure enough, he ended up swiftly fading from popular culture after his one post-''Idol'' hit.\\\

* ''WebVideo/SharkJumping'', while ultimately citing the aforementioned controversy over Kris Allen's victory in season 8 as what sent the show over the shark ramp, also made the case that it was a victim of its own success, which both destroyed its populist appeal and produced the scourge of HopelessAuditionees who gave [[SpringtimeForHitler deliberately bad performances in order to get on TV]], if only so that [[PointAndLaughShow people would gawk at them]]. The show was rooted in the premise that anybody who could sing could audition and potentially become a star, and this was genuinely true in the first few seasons. But as it became a pop culture phenomenon, seriously talented singers started entering the competition... crowding out the merely ''good'' singers such that, for anybody who didn't already have an amazing voice and/or plenty of training, their only hope of getting on TV was to be SoBadItsGood. ''Shark Jumping'' identified William Hung's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0S5EITWMi8 infamous audition]] in season 3 as the moment that foreshadowed this, as he wound up enjoying [[FifteenMinutesOfFame a brief yet brightly-burning career]] from his butchering of Music/RickyMartin's "She Bangs" -- which was more success than many of the finalists saw. As the good-but-not-great singers found it more difficult to compete, many people saw that they could far more easily become famous by following the path that Hung did, and the show's producers realized that it could get ratings and hype by focusing on the {{Dreadful Musician}}s in the audition episodes. Eventually, the novelty wore out and the point-and-laugh audience moved on.

From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/american-idol-winner-south noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (twelve out of nineteen, rising to thirteen if one counts Missouri, the home of season 7 winner David Cook, as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, including the South's music tradition, distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, and [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The [[JumpingTheShark jump-the-shark moment]] in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic|s}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.

* [[http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/wimpy-white-dudes-with-guitars-ruined-american-idol-1703735120/ This article]] from Maura Johnston of ''The Concourse'', analyzing the show's decline over the course of its run, points to a number of events in the earlier, popular seasons that foreshadowed how, in later seasons, the show and its voters would increasingly fall out of touch with the pop music mainstream. The ShockingElimination of Music/JenniferHudson very early in season 3 -- and her going on to have [[TheRunnerUpTakesItAll the biggest career out of anyone that season]] -- is regarded as the first crack, especially given the allegations that her elimination was due to racial bias (Hudson being a black RAndB singer). The true tipping point was the victory of Taylor Hicks in season 5. Hicks, a soul singer whose style couldn't have been more different from contemporary pop music trends, won largely due to the show's older voters who rejected said modern pop, and sure enough, he ended up swiftly fading from popular culture after his one post-''Idol'' hit. From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/american-idol-winner-south noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (twelve out of seventeen, rising to thirteen if one counts Missouri, the home of season 7 winner David Cook, as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, including the South's music tradition, distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, and [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The [[JumpingTheShark jump-the-shark moment]] in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic|s}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0fNDGxJXPs This episode]] of ''WebVideo/SharkJumping'', meanwhile, while ultimately citing the aforementioned controversy over Kris Allen's victory in season 8 as what sent the show over the shark ramp, also makes the case that it was a victim of its own success, which both destroyed its populist appeal and produced the scourge of HopelessAuditionees who gave [[SpringtimeForHitler deliberately bad performances in order to get on TV]], if only so that [[PointAndLaughShow people would gawk at them]]. The show was rooted in the premise that anybody who could sing could audition and potentially become a star, and this was genuinely true in the first few seasons. But as it became a pop culture phenomenon, seriously talented singers started entering the competition... crowding out the merely ''good'' singers such that, for anybody who didn't already have an amazing voice and/or plenty of training, their only hope of getting on TV was to be SoBadItsGood. ''Shark Jumping'' identifies William Hung's infamous audition in season 3 as the moment that foreshadowed this, as he wound up enjoying [[FifteenMinutesOfFame a brief, yet brightly-burning, career]] from his butchering of Music/RickyMartin's "She Bangs" -- which was more success than many of the finalists saw. As the good-but-not-great singers found it more difficult to compete, many people saw that they could far more easily become famous by following the path that Hung did, and the show's producers realized that it could get ratings and hype by focusing on the {{Dreadful Musician}}s in the audition episodes. Eventually, the novelty wore out and the point-and-laugh audience moved on.

* [[http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/wimpy-white-dudes-with-guitars-ruined-american-idol-1703735120/ This article]] from Maura Johnston of ''The Concourse'', analyzing the show's decline over the course of its run, points to a number of events in the earlier, popular seasons that foreshadowed how, in later seasons, the show and its voters would increasingly fall out of step with the pop music mainstream. The ShockingElimination of Music/JenniferHudson very early in season 3 -- and her going on to have [[TheRunnerUpTakesItAll the biggest career out of anyone that season]] -- is regarded as the first crack, especially given the allegations that her elimination was due to racial bias (Hudson being a black RAndB singer), but the true tipping point was the victory of Taylor Hicks in season 5. Hicks, a soul singer whose style couldn't have been more different from contemporary pop music trends, won largely due to the show's older voters who rejected said modern pop, and sure enough, he ended up swiftly fading from popular culture after his one post-''Idol'' hit. From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/american-idol-winner-south noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (twelve out of seventeen, rising to thirteen if one counts Missouri, the home of season 7 winner David Cook, as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, including the South's music tradition, distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, and [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The [[JumpingTheShark jump-the-shark moment]] in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic|s}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.
* Another factor that bedeviled ''Idol'' during its run, one that was closely linked to the above, was the fact that its boom years coincided with the rise of the internet, which the show's creators never really figured out how to properly interact with. In the first couple of seasons, when most households only had dial-up (if anything) and UsefulNotes/WebTwoPointOh was still barely a blip on the radar, this wasn't an issue. However, ''Idol'' continued to ignore the internet at its peril, which caused two critical problems. First, it isolated the show from a new generation of young people, who engaged with social media at a far greater rate than their predecessors. Without a serious online presence even in the '10s, the show may as well have not existed to them except as something that their parents watched. As a result, the average viewer age [[http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/01/07/american-idols-audience-ages-remains-the-current-ratings-monster/ slowly crept up]] from 31 in the first season to 44 in the eighth to [[http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/explaining-decline-american-idol-fox-article-1.2222577 51 in the twelth]] (i.e. outside the 18-49 demographic), and the show's most successful finalists increasingly began to reflect the tastes of the show's older voters even though they saw little pop stardom afterwards. Second, it allowed snark blogs to become the face of the show's "fandom" online. The most infamous such site was Vote for the Worst, which was one of the first places to notice the aforementioned trend in the show favoring pop-unfriendly singers -- and proceeded to try and reinforce that trend, in the hopes of sabotaging a show that it saw as a blight on the pop culture landscape. The site burst into public consciousness in season 6 when it gave its endorsement to Sanjaya Malakar, and thanks to their efforts and those of others (such as Creator/HowardStern, who promoted the site and interviewed its creator on his show), the GiftedlyBad and otherwise {{hopeless|Auditionees}} contestant Malakar made it all the way to the Top 7 before he was eliminated.\\\

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0fNDGxJXPs This episode]] of ''WebVideo/SharkJumping'', meanwhile, while ultimately citing the aforementioned controversy over Kris Allen's victory in season 8 as what sent the show over the shark ramp, also makes the case that it was a victim of its own success, which both destroyed its populist appeal and produced the scourge of HopelessAuditionees who gave [[SpringtimeForHitler deliberately bad performances in order to get on TV]], if only so that [[PointAndLaughShow people would gawk at them]]. The show was rooted in the premise that anybody who could sing could audition and potentially become a star, and this was genuinely true in the first few seasons, but as it became a pop culture phenomenon, seriously talented singers started entering the competition... crowding out the merely ''good'' singers such that, for anybody who didn't have an amazing voice and/or plenty of training, their only hope of getting on TV was to be SoBadItsGood. ''Shark Jumping'' identifies William Hung's infamous audition in season 3 as the moment that foreshadowed this, as he wound up enjoying [[FifteenMinutesOfFame a brief, yet brightly-burning, career]] from his butchering of Music/RickyMartin's "She Bangs" -- which was more success than many of the finalists saw. As the good, but not great, singers found it more difficult to compete, many people saw that they could far more easily become famous by following the path that Hung did, and the show's producers realized that it could get ratings and hype by focusing on the {{Dreadful Musician}}s in the audition episodes. Eventually, the novelty wore out and the point-and-laugh audience moved on.

* Another factor that bedeviled ''Idol'' during its run, one that was closely linked to the above, was the fact that its boom years coincided with the rise of the internet, which the show's creators never really figured out how to properly interact with. In the first couple of seasons, when most households only had dial-up (if anything) and UsefulNotes/WebTwoPointOh was still barely a blip on the radar, this wasn't an issue. However, ''Idol'' continued to ignore the internet at its peril, which caused two critical problems. First, it isolated the show from a new generation of young people, who engaged with social media at a far greater rate than their predecessors. Without a serious online presence even in the '10s, the show may as well have not existed to them except as something that their parents watched. As a result, the average viewer age [[http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/01/07/american-idols-audience-ages-remains-the-current-ratings-monster/ slowly crept up]] from 31 in the first season to 44 in the eighth to [[http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/explaining-decline-american-idol-fox-article-1.2222577 51 in the twelth]] (i.e. outside the 18-49 demographic), and the show's most successful finalists increasingly began to reflect the tastes of the show's older voters even though they saw little pop stardom afterwards. Second, it allowed [[SnarkBait snark blogs]] to become the face of the show's "fandom" online. The most infamous such site was Vote for the Worst, which was one of the first places to notice the aforementioned trend in the show favoring pop-unfriendly singers -- and proceeded to try and reinforce that trend, in the hopes of sabotaging a show that it saw as a blight on the pop culture landscape. The site burst into public consciousness in season 6 when it gave its endorsement to Sanjaya Malakar, and thanks to their efforts and those of others (such as Creator/HowardStern, who promoted the site and interviewed its creator on his show), the GiftedlyBad and otherwise {{hopeless|Auditionees}} contestant Malakar made it all the way to the Top 7 before he was eliminated.\\\

* [[http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/wimpy-white-dudes-with-guitars-ruined-american-idol-1703735120/ This article]] from Maura Johnston of ''The Concourse'', analyzing the show's decline over the course of its run, points to a number of events in the earlier, popular seasons that foreshadowed how, in later seasons, the show and its voters would increasingly fall out of step with the pop music mainstream. The ShockingElimination of Music/JenniferHudson very early in season 3 -- and her going on to have [[TheRunnerUpTakesItAll the biggest career out of anyone that season]] -- is regarded as the first crack, especially given the allegations that her elimination was due to racial bias (Hudson being a black RAndB singer), but the true tipping point was the victory of Taylor Hicks in season 5. Hicks, a soul singer whose style couldn't have been more different from contemporary pop music trends, won largely due to the show's older voters who rejected said modern pop, and sure enough, he ended up swiftly fading from popular culture after his one post-''Idol'' hit. From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[http://www.today.com/id/34611375 noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (eleven out of sixteen, rising to twelve if one counts Missouri as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, ranging from the South's music tradition, to distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, to [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The [[JumpingTheShark jump-the-shark moment]] in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic|s}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.

* [[http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/wimpy-white-dudes-with-guitars-ruined-american-idol-1703735120/ This article]] from Maura Johnston of ''The Concourse'', analyzing the show's decline over the course of its run, points to a number of events in the earlier, popular seasons that foreshadowed how, in later seasons, the show and its voters would increasingly fall out of step with the pop music mainstream. The ShockingElimination of Music/JenniferHudson very early in season 3 -- and her going on to have [[TheRunnerUpTakesItAll the biggest career out of anyone that season]] -- is regarded as the first crack, especially given the allegations that her elimination was due to racial bias (Hudson being a black RAndB singer), but the true tipping point was the victory of Taylor Hicks in season 5. Hicks, a soul singer whose style couldn't have been more different from contemporary pop music trends, won largely due to the show's older voters who rejected said modern pop, and sure enough, he ended up swiftly fading from popular culture after his one post-''Idol'' hit.\\\
From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[http://www.today.com/id/34611375 noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (eleven out of sixteen, rising to twelve if one counts Missouri as Southern), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, ranging from the South's music tradition, to distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, to [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or John Mayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The [[JumpingTheShark jump-the-shark moment]] in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic|s}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last, at least before its revival on Creator/{{ABC}} in 2018.

* Another factor that bedeviled ''Idol'' during its run, one that was closely linked to the above, was the fact that its boom years coincided with the rise of the internet, which the show's creators never really figured out how to properly interact with. In the first couple of seasons, when most households only had dial-up (if anything) and UsefulNotes/WebTwoPointOh was still barely a blip on the radar, this wasn't an issue. However, ''Idol'' continued to ignore the internet at its peril, which caused two critical problems. First, it isolated the show from a new generation of young people, who engaged with social media at a far greater rate than their predecessors. Without a serious online presence even in the '10s, the show may as well have not existed to them except as something that their parents watched. As a result, the average viewer age [[http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/01/07/american-idols-audience-ages-remains-the-current-ratings-monster/ slowly crept up]] from 31 in the first season to 44 in the eighth to [[http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/explaining-decline-american-idol-fox-article-1.2222577 51 in the twelth]] (i.e. outside the 18-49 demographic), and the show's most successful finalists increasingly began to reflect the tastes of the show's older voters even though they saw little pop stardom afterwards. Second, it allowed [[SnarkBait snark blogs]] to become the face of the show's "fandom" online. The most infamous such site was Vote for the Worst, which was one of the first places to notice the aforementioned trend in the show favoring pop-unfriendly singers -- and proceeded to try and reinforce that trend, in the hopes of sabotaging a show that it saw as a blight on the pop culture landscape. The site burst into public consciousness in season 6 when it gave its endorsement to Sanjaya Malakar, and thanks to their efforts and those of others (such as Radio/HowardStern, who promoted the site and interviewed its creator on his show), the GiftedlyBad and otherwise {{hopeless|Auditionees}} contestant Malakar made it all the way to the Top 7 before he was eliminated.\\\

* [[http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/wimpy-white-dudes-with-guitars-ruined-american-idol-1703735120/ This article]] from Maura Johnston of The Concourse, analyzing the show's decline over the course of its run, points to a number of events in the earlier, popular seasons that foreshadowed how, in later seasons, the show and its voters would increasingly fall out of step with the pop music mainstream. The ShockingElimination of Jennifer Hudson very early in season 3 -- and her going on to have [[TheRunnerUpTakesItAll the biggest career out of anyone that season]] -- is regarded as the first crack, especially given the allegations that her elimination was due to racial bias (Hudson being a black RAndB singer), but the true tipping point was the victory of Taylor Hicks in season 5. Hicks, a soul singer whose style couldn't have been more different from contemporary pop music trends, won largely due to the show's older voters who rejected said modern pop, and sure enough, he ended up swiftly fading from popular culture after his one post-''Idol'' hit.\\\
From then on, singers with modern pop or RAndB sensibilities found it harder to stay in the game as the show's graying core voter base favored "white guys with guitars", i.e. young, attractive, non-threatening white guys (often from [[DeepSouth the Bible Belt]][[note]]It's been [[http://www.today.com/id/34611375 noted]] that an overwhelming share of the show's leading contestants, including the vast majority of its winners (eleven out of fifteen), hailed from the Southern United States. Many theories have been put forward to explain this, ranging from the South's music tradition, to distance from the big coastal media centers making people more accepting of TV talent shows as a path to stardom, to [[PatrioticFervor Southern pride]] causing bloc voting in favor of "local" contestants.[[/note]]) with soft vocals who performed acoustic ballads in the vein of Music/JasonMraz or Music/JohnMayer. Such artists usually left no presence on the pop charts; season 10 winner Scotty [=McCreary=] having success in CountryMusic but no pop crossover hits, and season 11 winner Phillip Phillips becoming a TwoHitWonder with "Home" and "Gone Gone Gone", was about the best they ever realistically hoped for. The [[JumpingTheShark jump-the-shark moment]] in season 8, when Kris Allen won a DarkHorseVictory over Music/AdamLambert (and under [[VoteEarlyVoteOften fairly suspicious circumstances]], at that), was merely the moment at which this became readily apparent even to the show's fans. The pop music world abandoned the show, sponsors followed suit, and ratings (especially in the key 18-49 {{demographic|s}}) plunged, leading to a growing number of gimmicks and [[StuntCasting stunt-cast judges]] in an attempt to [[WereStillRelevantDammit keep the show relevant]] against competitors like ''Series/TheVoice''. Eventually, it was announced that season 15 in 2016 would be the last.

* [[http://channelawesome.com/american-idol-shark-jumping/ This episode]] of ''WebVideo/SharkJumping'', meanwhile, while ultimately citing the aforementioned controversy over Kris Allen's victory in season 8 as what sent the show over the shark ramp, also makes the case that it was a victim of its own success, which both destroyed its populist appeal and produced the scourge of HopelessAuditionees who gave [[SpringtimeForHitler deliberately bad performances in order to get on TV]], if only so that [[PointAndLaughShow people would gawk at them]]. The show was rooted in the premise that anybody who could sing could audition and potentially become a star, and this was genuinely true in the first few seasons, but as it became a pop culture phenomenon, seriously talented singers started entering the competition... crowding out the merely ''good'' singers such that, for anybody who didn't have an amazing voice and/or plenty of training, their only hope of getting on TV was to be SoBadItsGood. ''Shark Jumping'' identifies William Hung's infamous audition in season 3 as the moment that foreshadowed this, as he wound up enjoying [[FifteenMinutesOfFame a brief, yet brightly-burning, career]] from his butchering of Music/RickyMartin's "She Bangs" -- which was more success than many of the finalists saw. As the good, but not great, singers found it more difficult to compete, many people saw that they could far more easily become famous by following the path that Hung did, and the show's producers realized that it could get ratings and hype by focusing on the {{Dreadful Musician}}s in the audition episodes. Eventually, the novelty wore out and the point-and-laugh audience moved on.

* Another factor that bedeviled ''Idol'' during its run, one that was closely linked to the above, was the fact that its boom years coincided with the rise of the internet, which the show's creators never really figured out how to properly interact with. In the first couple of seasons, when most households only had dial-up (if anything) and WebTwoPointOh was still barely a blip on the radar, this wasn't an issue. However, ''Idol'' continued to ignore the internet at its peril, which caused two critical problems. First, it isolated the show from a new generation of young people, who engaged with social media at a far greater rate than their predecessors. Without a serious online presence even in the '10s, the show may as well have not existed to them except as something that their parents watched. As a result, the average viewer age [[http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/01/07/american-idols-audience-ages-remains-the-current-ratings-monster/ slowly crept up]] from 31 in the first season to 44 in the eighth to [[http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/explaining-decline-american-idol-fox-article-1.2222577 51 in the twelth]] (i.e. outside the 18-49 demographic), and the show's most successful finalists increasingly began to reflect the tastes of the show's older voters even though they saw little pop stardom afterwards. Second, it allowed [[SnarkBait snark blogs]] to become the face of the show's "fandom" online. The most infamous such site was Vote for the Worst, which was one of the first places to notice the aforementioned trend in the show favoring pop-unfriendly singers -- and proceeded to try and reinforce that trend, in the hopes of sabotaging a show that it saw as a blight on the pop culture landscape. The site burst into public consciousness in season 6 when it gave its endorsement to Sanjaya Malakar, and thanks to their efforts and those of others (such as Radio/HowardStern, who promoted the site and interviewed its creator on his show), the GiftedlyBad and otherwise {{hopeless|Auditionees}} contestant Malakar made it all the way to the Top 7 before he was eliminated.\\\

* [[http://channelawesome.com/american-idol-shark-jumping/ This episode]] of ''WebVideo/SharkJumping'', meanwhile, while ultimately citing the aforementioned controversy over Kris Allen's victory in season 8 as what sent the show over the shark ramp, also makes the case that it was a victim of its own success, which both destroyed its populist appeal and produced the scourge of HopelessAuditionees who gave [[SpringtimeForHitler deliberately bad performances in order to get on TV]], if only so that [[PointAndLaughShow people would gawk at them]]. The show was rooted in the premise that anybody who could sing could audition and potentially become a star, and this was genuinely true in the first few seasons, but as it became a pop culture phenomenon, seriously talented singers started entering the competition... crowding out the merely ''good'' singers such that, for anybody who didn't have an amazing voice and/or plenty of training, their only hope of getting on TV was to be SoBadItsGood. ''Shark Jumping'' identifies William Hung's infamous audition in season 3 as the moment that foreshadowed this, as he wound up enjoying [[FifteenMinutesOfFame a brief, yet brightly-burning, career]] from his butchering of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" -- which was more success than many of the finalists saw. As the good, but not great, singers found it more difficult to compete, many people saw that they could far more easily become famous by following the path that Hung did, and the show's producers realized that it could get ratings and hype by focusing on the {{Dreadful Musician}}s in the audition episodes. Eventually, the novelty wore out and the point-and-laugh audience moved on.