American Idol Executive Producer Nigel Lythgoe has spoken out on the declining ratings of American Idol 2013 and he’s not placing any of the blame on the lack of hot guys for the young female demographic to get behind.
It’s all about the judges, he says.
“I don’t think we have good chemistry with the judges,” Nigel told Zap2It. “And that saddens me. They are good individually, but I miss the camaraderie we have had in the past.And it has been really difficult because it has been a good season of talent. That is always very sad, and everybody of course has an opinion as to how we can stop falling ratings. They all become producers.”
So yeah, Idol never should have ditched Paula Abdul. They should have just replaced Simon. And then when people were getting used to Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler (who along with Randy had GREAT chemistry), they ditch them too.
But Nigel isn’t taking the blame for that either.
“Fox books the judges and has the last few years,” he said.
I’m not TV producer, but I watch A LOT of TV and always have. So I do have a few ideas as to what’s wrong with this season:
- I do think Nigel is right about the judges, but that’s not the only problem. Randy is a wash. Mariah is pointless and Nicki is running off the older audience with her weird made-up language and rude attitude. Keith is fine and should stay on.
- While I’m ready for a girl to win, the way Idol calculated EVERY LAST detail of this season to get a season where NO girl was eliminated before Top 5 is just ridiculous. Teen girls are/were a large part of the audience and they love boys. The love crushing on boys and love tweeting about boys and the love voting for boys on American Idol. You took that away from them by only allowing mediocre male singers and then made sure every single detail from theme to performance placement insured that they’d go home one by one.
- The format is stale. You excited us by showing us how the votes played out ONE WEEK ONLY. And as soon as you realized that would foil your plan to knock all of the guys out, you only gave us hints the rest of the time. Oh, and STOP with the themes. Let them sing whatever they want each week.
OK, I didn’t mean for this to be an 0p-ed piece, but that’s how it turned out. So what do you think is at fault for the declining ratings of American Idol 2013?