Idol Chatter: Buy Now, Sing Later
Is there no respite from advertising on television? For every move a consumer makes to avoid being solicited, the networks come up with a countermeasure. As a result, product placement and in-show pitches are at an all-time high. We’ve come a long way from Milton Berle singing about Sky Chief gasoline at the beginning of Texaco Star Theater before leaving viewers alone to enjoy their program.
A case in point: The American Idol season finale. Anyone with a pulse has had no choice but to absorb American Idol’s mystique, whether Paula Abdul’s romantic tangle with one of the contestants, or how dedicated bands of miscreants attempted to undermine the show’s credibility by voting en masse for a truly horrible singer, or the fact that the judges drink from cups bearing the Coca-Cola logo.
That last is a salient point. During the finale, it was still possible to have advertising forced down one’s throat, despite using TiVo or other devices to skip the overt commercials.
American Idol’s in-show assault started right at the program’s top. In the early 1970s, game shows held off mentioning that hosts’ suits were provided by Botany 500 until the very end of the program. Not so American Idol, where barely three minutes in the two contestants were shown being stuffed into outfits designed by Ashton Michael and Badgley Mischka. I hope Ashton Michael, which unlike Badgley Mischka didn’t get its name flashed across the screen, got a discount on its placement fee.
Actually, I hope they both did, because the only way I was able to capture their names was by Googling them. American Idol’s camera work consists of swoops and tilts geared toward inducing more nausea than the contestants themselves. How are viewers supposed to retain couture names when they’re concentrating on not losing their dinners?
Ford Motor Co. did a bit better in this regard. At the one-hour mark, the program came out of a commercial break with what was essentially another commercial — an in-show video of images from Ford TV ads set to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” At the end of this montage, both contestants were presented with Ford Mustangs. Bully for them, and may the producers be hitched to the trailer posts of a Ford pickup and dragged up and down Hollywood Boulevard for presenting a solid three minutes of prostitution masquerading as programming.
The flackery even extended its tentacles into what was supposed to be the pure entertainment parts of the show. The introduction of a Tony Bennett solo came with a plug for his “Duets: An American Classic” album. Gwen Stefani’s spot highlighted her in-process tour. A medley of songs from The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, seemingly out of place on a show that celebrates new musical talent, had a twofer promotional backdrop: Not only is former Beatle Paul McCartney releasing a new album, but there’s been a fair amount of hullabaloo over 2007 being Sgt. Pepper’s 40th anniversary.
That whirring sound you heard in the background? No, not feedback: Just John Lennon and George Harrison spinning in their graves. Pay it no mind.
This being the last show of the series, I’m told I missed viewers being exhorted to phone or text in their votes via their Cingular phones. Well, no. I didn’t miss it at all.
Neither, I suspect, did the viewers.
