On Sunday night, American TV viewers witnessed a clash of titans, as NBC brought together the best of the best in a test of raw talent and unbridled passion. Oh yeah, and the Super Bowl was great too.
Sunday’s season two premiere of reality singing show The Voice garnered an impressive 37.6 million views and scored a 16.3 rating, NBC’s highest rating for any non-sports program since the finale of Friends in 2004. Though likely boosted by Blake Shelton’s patriotic rendition of “America the Beautiful” and Cee Lo Green’s surprise cameo during the halftime show, The Voice’s numbers speak to the success of a franchise that has entered a market already swarming with formidable competition.
American Idol has been a cultural icon for over a decade, producing platinum selling artists Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Daughtry. And while many claim that Idol has lost its cultural relevance, Clarkson’s stunning Super Bowl national anthem, Katharine McPhee’s starring role in the much-anticipated Smash, and Scotty McCreery’s recent chart-topping album all suggest that the show is still in touch with the American public (well, at least with the middle-aged, Middle American public). It’s simply hard to claim that a show has run its course when it still attracts more viewers than any other show on television, as Idol did just last week.
Not to be outdone by the generic talent shows flooding the airwaves, Simon Cowell introduced his own British baby, X Factor, to America this fall. While it failed to meet Cowell’s personal aspirations, the show achieved modest ratings and, most importantly, a green light for season two. Despite the bloodbath that saw host Steve Jones and judges Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger file for unemployment benefits, X Factor shined this weekend with a star-studded Super Bowl Pepsi ad featuring season one winner Melanie Amaro.
Add The Sing-Off and America’s Got Talent to the mix, and the supply of reality singing competition soars to a level that’s overbearing at best—and nauseating at worst. Critics have rested easy on the logic that the market simply won’t support America’s oversaturation of talent-seeking programming. But the ratings data seem to disagree. So what gives? Americans like singing competitions, but when is it too much of a good thing?
Look to the myriad of crime dramas, the quirky success of survival shows, or the never-ending stream of reality housewife banter, and you realize that programming, at least empirically, seems to favor formula. If the show ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and that seems to be the case for reality singing competitions.
The music industry, on the other hand, operates differently. It is much more competitive, diverse, and saturated. Network effects make chart-topping commercial success clump in a few successful acts—just look to Katy Perry, Adele, or Rihanna in 2011. What’s more, demand is falling; record sales have slumped due largely to illicit file sharing and the proliferation of free, though limited, music services like Spotify and Pandora.
On the supply side of superstardom, Idol, The Voice, and X Factor are generally better at producing viewership than at producing relevant, marketable singers. Most of the Hollywood-manufactured stars tend to fade as soon as the results show confetti falls. In general, talent scouts like Cowell are losing their relevance to the technological advancements of the information age. It’s a result of sites like Youtube and MySpace that talent once deemed “undiscovered” is often nothing more than “mediocre.” In the modern era, the Internet—not reality shows—ferrets out music’s winners and losers.
The result of this musical supply and demand imbalance is that while a large amount of successful singing competition shows can exist, their promises to produce pop stars will remain largely unfulfilled. Singing competitions may still top the charts, but their winners inevitably fall flat.
