Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Thoughts on ABC, The Biggest Loser, and American Idol Finale Week

It has been a while since I have talked about TV since I have been rather involved with other things as of late. So I want to talk about TV today.

Well after ABC recently announced that they are ending 2 of their 3 long running soap operas, now ABC is about to drop their entire current Saturday morning lineup. The interesting thing about this is that most if not all of their current Saturday Kids lineup are Disney shows and Disney owns ABC. Apparently Disney can't even get kids to watch Saturday morning TV shows anymore. If they can't, the question is who can?

Since ABC still has to have a few hours of children's programming because of FCC requirements, they are going to introduce a new children's programming block to replace their current Disney themed one. I have mixed feelings on this. The good news is that the new block will be new shows in high definition and will probably have more educational value than the current Disney themed ones. The bad news is that the ratings will likely be down with the new kids format, ABC is once again giving up on a long tradition of Saturday animated shows just like they are planning on doing with their soaps, and kids (especially teenagers) will likely pursue other forms of entertainment such as browsing the Internet or playing video games on Saturday mornings which is much more subject to controversial material than broadcast TV. Usually the worst things on Saturday morning children's TV are just ad spots aimed at kids to get their parents to buy sugary cereals or the latest toys. With Internet browsing, you don't know what kinds of people or advertising your kids may be approached with.

I watched the Biggest Loser Season Finale. I was glad that it was finally over. It went on way too long this past season. I didn't like the usual "feel-good" mentality of the final episode. The Biggest Loser people constantly try to convince the viewer that they are changing lives. The answer to that is yes AND no! The no part was what they didn't show. Rulon Gardner, the Olympian from this past season, was a no-show at the finals. It would have been nice if we would have gotten an update on his weight loss journey. Moses and his daughter have actually GAINED weight when they returned to the finale from the time they were eliminated from the show. Meanwhile Dan and Don, the police officer twin brothers, who were eliminated early on after throwing their weigh-ins managed to lose more weight than many of the contestants who stayed a lot longer on the show and didn't try to throw weigh-ins. So the key thing to remember is that the Biggest Loser show works, but only for SOME people and NOT for MANY people apparently.

Finally, I have to mention this season's top 2 on American Idol. This is a season where I don't care who wins because there were other singers who would have made a better top 2 than Lauren and Scotty. I thought Lauren was quite a bit better than Scotty. But I think the show's producers were trying to imply too much that Lauren was the underdog and that Scotty was the frontrunner. I think this effort of making Lauren look like the underdog will backfire and Scotty will still win. I think Lauren and Scotty are in the finals only because their fans stuck with them the entire season while James and Casey and Pia's fans were so upset over the shocking results that many of them quit watching the show as voters and only watched to see who was left in the competition instead of voting for the remaining pop singers. That is my theory why we got 2 young country singers over the more talented singers that were in the other genres this season.

The only good news is that we are almost 100% guaranteed we will have a better top 2 matchup next year on Idol.

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