Stan Walker Wins Australian Idol

by Nathan Taylor
Stan Walker has won the 7th series of Australian Idol defeating Hayley Warner at the Sydney Opera House tonight.
In what was a terrible year for Australian Idol...I'm referring to the talent, ratings and judges... the Finale was a great spectacle as always and the right winner won on the night.
I'm sure the two Idol finalists will have careers in the music industry, whether that is a short or long career, a successful or an unsuccessful career or a career winning ARIA's or a career singing Christmas carols.
Australian Idol looks like it will return in 2010 in a new format.
Congrats Stan!!

Sabrina attacks Idol experience

by Nathan Taylor

Today on The Daily Telegraph blog I had the opportunity to ask Sabrina Batshon who was eliminated last night from Australian Idol what she thought of the standard of this year's series?

Also with Australian Idol being in a ratings slump this year, I asked her if she thought it was because of the low standard of contestants or that woeful new judge Jay Dee.

You'll be surprised on what she opened up about... here's what she said:

(sic) Thank you for the support but I dont wish to make the same mistake viewers did in judging people. The Idols are my best friends and I don’t have any ill feeling towars them. They are all extremely talented and I think Idol has created a bad name for itself. It’s the people that vote and the way the cookie crumbles. I think they need new judges. People are getting really bored and the judges are under alot of pressure to give a good show and when you are just saying things to entertain people, people get bored. Dicko’s gotten away with murder, and Marcia’s very kind. JDee needs alot of time to warm up. But with JDee you need 2 stronger judges, and Marcia and Dicko are not as strong. I think Dicko has said a lot of things, he makes derogatory comments and i don’t know if the fans agree with that, his jokes are not funny. We;ve watched that year after year and it gets boring. I didnt watch Idol beforehand, and I joined as I had no expectation. Kyle is fascinating to watch, he is funny and real and witty and not there to play games and they need that, its crucial for the show, and in my opinion i dont know if theyll bother airing it next year. Right now, they are just drowning. Im glad it did it though.

**The comments Sabrina made to me have been picked up as stories by The Daily Telegraph and TV Tonight. I wish they credited me for asking the question!**

Australian Idol rigged by SCHOOLGIRLS!

by Nathan Taylor

Okay, I'll make it short and not so sweet. I'm annoyed, I'm angry and I can't believe the best contestant of this year's woeful Australian Idol series was voted out.

Sabrina Batshon, 24, was eliminated tonight leaving a bunch of nobodies. Surprisingly all the girls this year are great and the guys are terrible.

Which leads me to think, that little school girls from probably primary to grade 10 are texting their little hearts out to keep all the boys in the contest... and I'll repeat again the boys who are TERRIBLE!

Do they think if they text their favourite male idol's name to 19 10 10 they may have a chance of meeting them... may have a chance of dating them... may have a chance of marrying them. GET REAL!

As you can see I'm mad as hell and I think I should join the rest of the country and switch this crap off!

Whoa that felt good!

Fans call for Aus Idol to be AXED!

Former fans of Australian Idol have bombarded websites and forums expressing their disappointment in this year's contestants and want the long running Channel 10 series chopped!

Ratings for the seventh series of Idol have been way down on previous years. Last Sunday night's Wildcard episode couldn't even crack the 1 million mark only managing 992,000 nation-wide and was the lowest rated episode so far this season.

Fans have had their say on this year's series in big numbers on television blogs like TV Tonight.

One former fan known as Trev said: "Idol is an amateur show. Some acts are good, some not so and some atrocious. As I have mentioned several times earlier, I have not even bothered to watch it at all this season."

Another said: " I love Idol. I however have been disappointed by this season; the 6:30 start, crap judging, promoting the ‘tradie’ (pictured above) etc."

However, Idol still has many fans out there that will defend the show to the death. Blogger Ravi posted this in defence: "All those with Idol problems you need to go to axe swingers anonymous. It’s better to have a competition where the unexpected occurs rather than one where you know the winner from the start. It will get better and the fact there is no stand out may work to the shows advantage. Wild card night is for the best of the rest so it is no wonder it rated lower."

Personally, I have been a big fan of the series since day dot and haven't missed an episode yet this season, but I was really disappointed when producers axed Kyle and got Sony employee Jay Dee to replace him. I thought this was a bad move in my eyes as Kyle gave the show some bite and it was fun to watch him tell it like it is and so far Jay Dee has failed to impress me.

I also think the 6:30pm family friendly time-slot is hurting ratings figures as well and I just think after 7 seasons people are losing interest. It happened to Big Brother last year and unfortunately I think Idol may learn the same fate.

"This is International Idol"

by Nathan Taylor

Last night Australian Idol revealed its new judge to replace Kyle Sandilands, Sony Music talent scout Jay Dee Springbett. Something interesting about Jay Dee is he is actually British. Which brings me to think Marcia's originally from the US and the other judge Dicko is also a fellow Brit.

What's going on..? All our judges are ex-pats and while Marcia has been in the country for many decades now, she still has her American accent and Dicko and Jay Dee are fairly recent to our shores and both also hold a strong English accent.

So what's wrong with Aussie judges..? They dumped Mark Holden and now Kyle who were very Aussie... So why not rename the show 'International Idol'.

Bloody Hell...

(Pic: TV Tonight)

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

Sandilands axed from Idol

by Peter Lang

It seems that Kyle Sandilands has paid the ultimate price for last week's 'Lie Detector Test' debacle with Network Ten dumping him as the third Australian Idol host for 2009.
The controversial shock jock will still appear in all the audition episodes as they've already been filmed but once the live audience Top 30 shows begin, his place will be taken by as yet undetermined guest judges.
Channel 10 says they made the decision because Idol is seen as very much a family focused show and they didn't want anyone on it, especially a judge, tarnishing that image.
I think this is a total over-reaction by the show's producers who tolerated Sandilands numerous contestant insults and barbs for years because they knew it helped draw ratings points for the show.
Now that Sandilands is on the nose with the mainstream media and getting too much negative attention, he has been unceremoniously dumped.
Unfortunately Sandilands is in this unenviable position because over the years he has p**ed off far too many journalists and media moguls. I hate to say it but I think Sandilands thought he was untouchable and could say whatever he wanted, about whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted, without consequence.
He has just learned, he can't, no one can!
Meanwhile the Kyle and Jackie O media circus continued today with reports that the top rating twosome were on some self imposed exile rather than an official suspension by Austereo.
Of course the cynical amongst us wonders if this is actually true or just some publicity stunt aimed at drawing more attention to the talented twosome in the hope that once they're back on air their ratings points will double.
If it is a stunt, I just hope it doesn't backfire on them, like it did to the once popular Chasers.
Time will tell I guess.