14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Fox announced that the upcoming season of American Idol, its 15th, would also be the last one, as the time had come for it to hang up its microphone and go home. The decision wasn’t exactly surprising considering that ratings had dwindled in recent seasons, but it still marks the demise of a giant.
Whether we liked it or not, American Idol was a trendsetter, paving the road for newer singing televised competitions like The X Factor and The Voice. The mere fact that it lasted for so many years on the air is proof that, at one point, it had the perfect winning formula.
Then Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj came in the picture, when they were hired as judges.
Mimi and Nicki were the beginning of the end
Billboard magazine got to speak with Nigel Lythgoe, who produced American Idol for seasons 1 through 7, and then 10 through 12, right after Fox’s announcement of the cancelation.
The way he sees it, the music industry owes a lot to American Idol, because it was the first TV show of the kind to actually encourage music sales, whether digital or on actual records.
The entertainment industry also owes a lot to American Idol, as it proposed a new concept of TV entertainment, one that combined unscripted programming with music, interactive and entertaining at the same time, Lythgoe says.
Producers on the show erred when they tipped the scales in favor of unscripted programming, thus making American Idol more about the judges than it was about the singing talent on display. Enter the two divas.
“Mariah and Nicki was just crazy, and then it really started becoming about the judges and took away from the contestants altogether,” he says. “I think that was a major failing on the part of casting to have those two together. On their own, either one may have been successful.”
The Mariah vs. Nicki drama
The two were brought as judges after the original lineup fell apart. However, producers initially wanted only Mariah on the panel, but as the air date neared, they realized that she might not be enough drama to draw in audiences, so they brought someone they were sure she was going to clash with, the outspoken rapper Nicki Minaj.
Mariah had agreed to be on the panel precisely because she was told she would be the only female judge, so naturally, she didn’t take the news of Nicki’s arrival kindly. Tensions mounted and exploded during the auditions stage, and someone with a camera shot the heated exchange and then leaked the footage online.
At the time, it was believed the “leak” was planned by Fox to drum up more publicity for the upcoming season, but whether it was or not didn’t even matter anymore: by then, everyone was paying attention to the two judges instead of the contestants before them.
Both Mariah and Nicki left after one season, but American Idol never recovered in the ratings. So it could be that Lythgoe has a point when he says that hiring them was the biggest mistake that producers could have made.