Steven Strauss
Well, at least the right David won.
Although Fox's American Idol got a lot wrong this year, and suffered a much-discussed ratings hit in the process, it nevertheless got the most important thing right: the singing. And that is no small thing. From a business perspective, if your business is bringing the top new talent to the fore, then you best do that. The last two years, the winners were the forgettable Jordin Sparks and the gimmicky Taylor Hicks, which meant that Idol simply was not delivering on what it was supposed to do. But this year, offering up such strong contestants as the Davids, Syesha Mercado and (my favorite) Michael Johns created a much stronger show. So why the ratings slide? It's not hard to figure out, really, and it's a mistake that any business can make -- big and small alike. The problem? They got greedy. As my sweet grandfather used to say, "Too much of a good thing is a bad thing." If I were to ask you "what was there too much of in American Idol this year?", you know the answer (and no, I am not talking about dread-locked Jason Castro). The easy answer is ... commercials, product placement and advertisements. Whether it's the ever-present Coca-Cola (KO Quote - Cramer on KO - Stock Picks) glass that Simon sips from, music videos to sell Ford (F Quote - Cramer on F - Stock Picks) cars, pitches for Apple's (AAPL Quote - Cramer on AAPL - Stock Picks) iTunes, or commercial blocks that felt like they lasted 12 minutes, this year American Idol seemed to take the pitching of products to a whole new, and unwelcome, level.
RSS
