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'Idol' going strong, teens tune out |
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Written by Jonathan Storm, McClatchy-Tribune
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Tuesday, 13 March 2007 |
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Is this the beginning of the end of "American Idol"?
The competition would trade anything for what one network boss calls the "Death Star," a show that destroys any program put up against it and commands ad rates four times higher than average, and one which, barring strange circumstances, could still have Fox singing sweetly in 2015.
After constantly growing in ratings since its first season in 2002 and consistently lurking in the top 10 overall, "Idol" hit the No. 1 spot for the first time last year. It may defy history this season. Prior to this, only three series in 57 years of Nielsen measurements have gotten bigger after reaching the top: "The Beverly Hillbillies," "The Cosby Show" and "Seinfeld."
But there may be a force far stronger than history working against "Idol": teenage girls.
As the season moves into the finals this week with 12 warblers of varying talent, there's anecdotal and statistical evidence — admittedly not much more monumental than some of that microscopic stuff on "CSI" — that teenage girls are turning away from the show that routinely draws half again as many viewers as its nearest competitor.
"It has slightly eroded with some younger demographics," said John Rash, senior vice president at Campbell Mithun advertising in Minneapolis. But, he said, that takes nothing from its status as "the seminal show of the decade."
Still, if that trend continues, said Henry Jenkins 3d, an "American Idol" expert who's a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (they don't study only astrophysics and computer innards), it could change not only the ad rates, but also the impact of new advertising initiatives.
Like the Earth, "Idol" has its own seasons. We are coming out of the calm, and traditionally low-rated, relatively speaking, portion of the series, where the semi-talented but less than stellar singers compete for the finals.
The show began like gangbusters in January with its traveling wannabe freak show drawing 5 percent more viewers than it did a year ago. But by last week, it had lost all of them and then some. Historical patterns, however, indicate it should rebound in the spring as the drama heats up among the elite performers who actually have a chance to become stars.
"It's a changing of the guard," said Jenkins, DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, who noted "a significant difference between those who watch early on and those who watch later on." He said younger people tended to like the "black comedy" of the try-out stooges, while a slightly older audience favored the song and suspense of the finals.
Everyone contacted for this article found the ratings drop among youngsters, confirmed by such phenomena as a slight resurgence of UPN's young-skewing "Gilmore Girls," intriguing, but they emphasized that folks were hardly streaming for the exits.
"I don't think it's a four-alarm fire," said Brad Adgate, senior vice president for media planning at Horizon Media, who has noticed his 14-year-old daughter "doesn't watch it as she used to," preferring to stay in her bedroom and send instant messages to a boyfriend.
"Female teens watch so they can talk about it in school next day," Adgate said. "If they don't feel the need to watch, they're not talking the next day."
That sort of bonus activity, beyond mere watching, is crucial to Idol's success, said Jenkins, a principal investigator in a study of the ways people interact with the show.
Very broadly, he found. "Teens turned it on. Moms joined them. Siblings wandered into the room, and Dad arrived for the recaps." He found the show was "a centerpiece of social interaction," during and afterward, direct and electronic, through telephones and e-mail.
That emotional link makes Idol "a showpiece for advertisers who want to explore product integrations" and will pay more "not just for higher ratings, but also for a link to the audience," Jenkins said.
ATT ("Text in your votes" shills Ryan Seacrest), Ford (with finalists cutting new commercials each week), and, particularly, Coca-Cola (with its red contestants' prep room decorated with subliminally stimulating silhouettes of bottles, and the judges' huge soda cups) benefit from "much higher brand recall among viewers of the show than any other show on television," Jenkins said.
And they pay, pay, pay. About $40 million altogether for a normal, two-episode "Idol" week, or around $1 billion for the season, including Thursday specials.
Advertising Age pegs the average cost of a 30-second Idol ad at $594,000 for the Tuesday performance episodes and $620,000 for the Wednesday results show. Top prices elsewhere: $394,000 for "Desperate Housewives" at ABC, $347,000 for "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" at CBS, $342,000 for "Sunday Night Football" at NBC. The median price for a prime-time ad on the big four networks is about $150,000.
"Idol" may be partially responsible for sowing the seeds of its own demise.
"Generation Y and X" — people born after 1965 and 1975 respectively — "may be being co-opted by baby boomers who have gradually gravitated to the show," said Rash, just as they were designed to by creators who made up a format of "young performers singing their parents' songs."
It's not a surprising pattern, said Adgate.
"When something becomes too mainstream, it turns kids off. They like things on the fringes."
Adgate said the audience shift, if it persisted, might encourage the other networks to stand up to the Death Star like plucky intergalactic rebels, rather than hiding in the tunnels of dim and desolate Apatros.
ABC, for instance, which moved "Lost" to 10 p.m. EDT Wednesdays and "Dancing With the Stars" to Mondays to escape "Idol's" gravitational field, "might think they can take advantage," he said. "Maybe they could effectively counterprogram."
But don't expect Darth, er, Simon Cowell, and his cronies to sit still.
"They have been very, very careful with things that they see are causing some sort of audience erosion, which is to be expected, and putting a finger in the dike and plugging it," Adgate said.
Maybe that's why Paula Abdul raves about how "contemporary" beat-box boy Blake Lewis is and why Cowell touts him as a dark horse to win the thing, when he sounds, at least to one pair of boomer ears, like a little kid playing choo-choo train.
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Jonathan Storm:
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