Monday, August 10, 2009

Steady start for Australian Idol


by Nathan Taylor

Last night the Australian public tuned into the seventh series of Australian Idol, but not all of us knew it was on.

Only 1.3 million viewers switched on to see the first stage of auditions and witnessed the brief return of Kyle Sandilands.

Critics have been saying today that people have deliberately missed the auditions because Kyle appears in them and with the recent controversy surrounding him families have decided to wait until he's gone for good before they start watching.

'The slide appears a protest vote against Sandilands, who was last week dumped by Channel 10 in the wake of The Kyle and Jackie O Show radio rape scandal'. (Daily Telegraph)

And that's fine if your going down that path, but last night Kyle provided some great moments, especially when he and good mate and guest judge Brian McFadden were taking the piss out of contestants. I reckon Kyle lightens up the judging panel (compared with the rather serious Dicko and Marcia) with his remarks and he always says what us at home are thinking.

It's a shame the producers of Idol are so weak and had to bow down to the pressure of the media and the public.

In terms of the less than impressive ratings, I'd like to put it down to:

1) The new 6:30pm time slot
2) The lack of promotion, usually we have a countdown in how many days to go
3) We are over auditions and just want to rip straight to the live shows
4) Dancing with the Stars and other programming