However you sort the blame for Idol's falling ratings, there's no question the final five singers who appear tonight (Fox, 8 ET/PT) are drawing the show's smallest crowds since the second season. And surely the quality of the show they're putting on has to be part of the reason.
There's not much that can be done to salvage this season, but Idol is still crucial to Fox's ratings future and an important part of viewers' entertainment mix. So here are a few suggestions to set it right:
• Prod the producers. Do these people have no learning curve at all? Nine seasons in, and they still haven't learned how to finish a live broadcast on time — or, even worse, how to pace it so the last contestant isn't subjected to judging that amounts to little more than a grunt or a grin. And they wonder why the show has never won the Emmy.
How hard can this be? A fifth-grader can tell you that if you allow the host and the judges to babble on incessantly at the start, you're going to run out of time at the end and cheat the fourth and fifth contestants. For heaven's sake, use some of those massive American Idol profits to buy a stopwatch and teach someone how to use it.
• Find better contestants. There is talent among tonight's five finalists, though none of them is as yet an "artist," despite the show's seeming determination to degrade that term into meaninglessness. But none of them is an entertainer in the way that, love or hate him, Adam Lambert clearly was. They seem to have no idea that winning — and even more, having a career — requires not just pleasing the judges but connecting through the camera to the audience.
Perhaps the show can't find entertainers in the audition process. But it certainly could do a better job of grooming them.
• Give Ellen a job. You'd think providing the contestants with an entertainer's perspective would be the perfect role for Ellen DeGeneres, who could be using her comments to help these novices become polished performers. Yet it's less clear now than it was at the start what purpose she thinks she's serving, other than to smile and tell them they're great. Even if that job weren't better left to their loved ones, singers in the top 5 should no longer need DeGeneres to boost their self-esteem. Let's hope that frees her up to say something of use and interest for a change.
Not that any of the judges deserve any prizes. You can argue that last week's castoff, Siobhan Magnus, ignored advice, though it was often so confusing and contradictory as to be incoherent. But when someone makes it that far into the contest and leaves a worse singer than when she arrived — halting, unsure and singing as if she had no concept of how one musical phrase is supposed to relate to the next — it's an indictment of the judges, the mentors and the show.
• Muzzle the host. For some of us, just hearing Ryan Seacrest insert that dramatic pause in his introductory "this is American Idol" is enough to set our teeth on edge. But even those who like him must realize he's running amok. To the long-running, uncomfortable faux lovers' quarrels with Simon Cowell and his equally embarrassing interviews with the singers, he has now added an arsenal of odd behaviors, ranging from petulant snits to flighty overexuberance. Watching him is exhausting.
Maybe that's why fewer people are doing so.
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