American Idol: Why Did Pia Toscano Get Sent Home?

If you watched American Idol last night, you probably had the same reaction that I did.

“So, I’m not watching this show anymore…”

I mean what is the point right?  Here the show had one of the better pure singers it has ever had (albeit slightly boring) and they were sending her home in 9^th place.  Let’s be honest though, 99% of us who say we are not going to watch any more will still tune in next week.  So instead of stewing in anger, why don’t we take a look at a few reasons as to how this could have happened.

American Idol has an Age and Gender Problem-  And I'm not talking about the contestants on the show, I am talking about the voting public.  Bottom line is that most of American Idols fans that vote are not in my demographic; they are female and are between the ages of 13-19.  That being the case, not only are people in that demographic too young to truly know what a fantastic performance is, they are basically voting based on their hormones as opposed to voting based on talent.  The last three winners were guys, and four of the last five. Every year, Randy proclaims this "The Year of the Girl," and every year the women go home early and they go home often. The previous two seasons have featured only one woman in the top 5, and the year before that only had two. Out of eight remaining contestants this season, Lauren Alaina and Haley Reinhart are the only females left. The vast majority of people who vote for this show are female, and they're apparently not voting for someone they can relate to, but someone they're attracted to.   Pretty women seem to get targeted especially these days, and as J-Lo noted often, and noted tonight, Pia was gorgeous.  Some of you may argue that Carrie Underwood was a beautiful woman and she won.  That is very true, but not only did Carrie appeal to a large section of fans (Country fans), she competed in a time where voting was not as accessible.  With texting being much more prominent now, and this year adding a vote online option, the voting has become much easier for people in the “problem” demographic.  Unless Idol figures out a way to fix this problem, I can definitely see it losing steam, especially once the X Factor debuts

The Judges are just too Weak-  Not everyone can hear the difference between a mediocre performance, a decent performance and a spectacular performance.  Those people rely on the judge’s comments to decide just how well one person did.  This season for the judges, everything has been rainbows and butterflies.  Even the most atrocious of performances have not gotten torn apart.  We all knew this was going to be a problem when Simon, and to a lesser extent, Kara, got replaced with two superstar musicians with a fan base to cater to.  Steven Tyler is barely there and has nothing to add to the proceedings.  JLo occasionally shows signs that shes willing to criticize someone but she always falls back into her pattern of saying “You were so good, but I want to see more”.  It seemed for a couple of weeks that Randy would try to be the resident bad guy, but he fell out of that very quickly.  While Simon Cowell could be a jerk at times, he was unquestionably powerful at scaring people - both the contestants and their fans - out of complacency. If Simon was still around, Casey Abrams (another one-time frontrunner) likely wouldn't have needed to be saved two weeks ago, because Simon would have called his recent performances self-indulgent, and it either would have shaken Casey out of his rut, or it would have put his fans on high alert to vote more often, or both. That didn't happen, the Judges Save got deployed much earlier than anyone expected - and wasn't available for Pia.  Similarly, Simon would not have tolerated Pia's long run of technically-proficient but mind-numbingly similar ballads, nor would he have treated Wednesday night's performance of "River Deep, Mountain High" like some brave journey out of Pia's ballad box, when (once you factor out the idea that Pia is capable of movement) it wasn't markedly different from any of her previous vocals. The judges let Pia coast for a long time, which made Pia and her fans complacent, and which led to this.

I can say that i wont as many times as I want, but I am going to continue to watch American Idol.  Untill they find a way to fix the problems that I have described, I am going to be watching it as just an entertaining couple of hours, and not as a serious singing competition.