Idols haven't always transitioned well off of the show but last year had a devastating stable of talent. Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina are both off to decent starts. James Durbin has already collaborated with rock royalty like Mick Mars. Casey Abrams was just signed to the perfect label for him. Haley Reinhart is lurking too and Stefano Langone was just signed as well. They remain the exception however. Still, there is hope. A key social media statistic provides a high ceiling hope that it already has found its biggest star since original champion Kelly Clarkson and Season 3 champion Carrie Underwood. If so, it actually might have just discovered its biggest star ever.
Here's what's at stake in Season 11 of American Idol - and how the mystery "X Factor" figures into that equation.
Every year the hype seems insurmountably larger than the previous season but this year there seems to be a surprisingly low-keyed campaign from FOX for its standby stalwart hit show
American Idol. I have a couple very generalized thoughts on this but my two preliminary theories indicate an acknowledgment that after last year brought a pleasantly surprising abundance of talent in the first season of the post-Simon Cowell Era, the show definitively scored a crucial and critically acclaimed (and necessary) coup in its effort to sustain viability in terms of life after Simon. They got more than what they needed in kickstarting the post-Simon era of the show because of a plethora of top notch artistry from its singers and perhaps that's exactly why they have been surprisingly quiet.
Despite the successful launchings of rival shows like
The Voice (a surprise hit despite the steady pre-launch promotional efforts and advertising and deep stable of major league star talent) and it's own Simon Cowell's same network
The X Factor (an even more surprisingly modestly less of a hit vehicle for reasons I won't get into in
this blog), the
Idol juggernaut still remains the dominating talent searching machine of all the singing competition shows. It remains the show that people tune into with a "Daddy's home" mantra matching the alpha dog on the block attitude the FOX powerhouse itself rightfully carries itself with.
I could write an entire blog on my thoughts on how the shows match-up stylistically with each other and what the strengths and weaknesses of each one is and also do so comparatively, and I certainly will at some point this season, and yet I still think that
Idol comes out looking very strong in that criteria at the end of the day. It also has the most glaring flaws of them all but its strengths overshadow and overpower them so overwhelmingly and yet I still get this feeling that the network and the brain trust (i.e. Simon Fuller and Nigel Lythgoe and company) are concerned about not having perhaps an even
larger expectation than last year because it overcame Simon Cowell's exit brilliantly. They also did this without a shred of a doubt that they could privately be nervous about the show looking like it can only lose its viewership totals and succumb to what would still undoubtedly be a false perception of decline even if they did suffer a modest loss of viewers this year. In actuality it would have just reminded us about the long standing prowess of the show's ratings and cultural impact and corresponding cultural influence.
All this leads me to suspect the
possibility, and after all that's all anyone can realistically speculate about, that they have some more high end talent ready to be unveiled this season. There's no superstar duo on the judges' panel to bring in to lure people either back into the fold or even simply keep them in the fold, and so I feel they are giving us the proverbial head fake this year. They will be showcasing returning talent, many of whom I suspect will survive the final cuts to the live rounds, and so therefore the possibility of familiarity could reign supreme this season.
Having said that, there will be always be fresh blood emerging each season and the boost the show certainly will get from last year's remarkable faux-comeback season (I say this facetiously because I never doubted it'd still be a hit show even if the ratings would have taken a modest hit), despite the two other aforementioned shows,
Idol will probably still be attracting a healthy portion of the also aforementioned high end talent. The $5 million prize
The X Factor offers, especially after the debut season of the show, will remain a more desirable prize but the surprisingly ironic twist to this just could be that people will show truer loyalty to the grandfather of reality singing shows first and foremost above all else. For the same often hampering reason why these shows fail to produce more major post-show stars like it should be doing, viewers (and future contestants watching from home before they audition themselves), identify with
the show itself ahead of the talent it produces.
This is not to say that some originally
Idol discovered singers didn't try out for
The X Factor this season. Most prominently showcased were Emma Henry and Caitlin Koch. Koch was one of the strongest voices on
The X Factor this year, and very plausibly arguably one of the most robbed of all the pre-live cuts (Simon had the deepest pool of talent followed by Nicole Scherzinger), although Koch was shown very briefly on
Idol last year whereas Henry was given a rather healthy amount of screen time before getting cut.
Unfortunately, Koch suffered from being part of a talent pool of girls in which no matter who had advanced out of her group and who didn't, the results were
always going to be controversial, whereas had she returned to the
American Idol arena this year (and they film these shows, albeit perhaps at different stages, roughly around the same time which precludes us from seeing the same people on different shows during the same reality season), great talents such as Ms. Koch are regrettably omitted from the so-called conversation from a potential consecutive go around the following season in regards to
American Idol. (This thread is part of a companion blog I will be writing at some point soon.)
So will
The Voice further drain some of the pool from the gold standard
American Idol now that it's proven its own metal and worth or is the king of the reality television realm just too strong to be slowed down, or at least anytime soon despite now entering its eleventh season? This is still the question facing
Idol just like it was last year in the midst of its judges shakeup, which stands as the biggest irony of all, that after
more than capably answering all the crucial questions in resoundingly favorable terms, the key question must be answered once more but the truth of the matter is that it must always be answered each year and this was just as true with Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul as it has been the past two seasons without the latter and as well as last year without
both.
Here's the good news for both
American Idol and the other shows for that matter; it ultimately doesn't matter as long as, from their respective standpoints, they simply produce that
one next big star; whether that person wins it all or not, quite frankly. (They of course won't say that under that criteria but the fact still remains that this is indeed the case, always has been, and always will be - as it
should be. They need a star regardless of that future star's final
Idol placing.) There's also a reason why, despite potentially having that person waiting in its wings, that they would purposely hold
back in their promos and marketing efforts. They'd do this if they don't want a preliminary backlash against the person they are touting in case people don't like that individual, resent being force-fed the specific talent regardless of what they think of that person's talents on the merits alone, be overly reliant on that person for the season regardless of the strength or lack thereof the rest of the season's talent pool, or any kind of combination of those factors.
I believe I've come across Exhibit A for that argument and like Thia Megia of Season 10 before her, she has a background which includes a stint on NBC's
America's Got Talent,
only this fellow
AGT alum competed during the first season while Ms. Megia appeared on the fourth year of its airing. If there's a quiet way to accumulate tens of millions of hits on YouTube and to be stealth enough to barely solicit even an underground caliber buzz, then somehow the sixteen year-old half Filipino-half Mexican Jessica E. Sanchez of San Diego, California has found a way to accomplish this extraordinarily unlikely feat. (I
tweeted to her earlier in the week but she has not shown any visible recent activity but I hope to have a follow up with Ms. Sanchez so she can directly tell her story. An open invitation for a blog write-up and interview is open to Ms. Sanchez as well.)
The allegedly leaked results of the prerecorded segments of the show (which I'm purposely not linking to) has hardly gone unnoticed to many fans of the show, both casual and regulars, and certainly it hasn't gotten past the diehards. The singers must sign a confidentiality release forms rumored to contain a libel penalty of $5 million that they clearly don't have. So why would anyone of them release the results? How would any of them be able to independently compile such a list? Do they not have the same restrictions for the
Idol staffs and FOX production crews as well? They're certainly privy to that information.
Here's my more conspiratorial theory on this; the producers themselves, or someone else powerful enough, leaked the results themselves. They might have figured that somehow someone like Jessica Sanchez would gain considerable buzz and public relations steam. Has anyone else noticed that there's hardly been an angry outcry from the
Idol powers that be? Where's the public outrage over leaked results? Or maybe they just don't want even more people being drawn to the leaked list but it's already been so widely reported, and people are locked back into
Idol mode again, that surely too many people now already know of the list, have seen it, or know how and where to find it. So where's the outrage? Aside from perhaps angrily tweeting about (I am currently unaware of this being the case), where's the normally colorful Nigel Lythgoe in all of this? Why hasn't he called for blood, made a very neck wringing proclamation of sworn vengeance on any guilty parties and where are the public write-ups, blogs, articles, and so forth covering his public thirsting for that blood?
It's just all too perfect in terms of the relative silence and unless they start to publicly comment on things once the show goes live this year, when the results are obviously not in the can, or at least a promised public rebuttal once they have reached that stage, reasonable questions will linger. Leaked results of these shows is nothing new but when you look at the statistical data of Ms. Sanchez's social media, particularly on YouTube, it's hard not to take more liberties when speculating.
This of course could be a very failed effort on their part if this is indeed the case, and again, it still would ultimately seem like an inglorious marketing strategy. You would still imagine there would be a more overt attempt on their part to at least hint or even flat out suggest an already concocted tour de force waiting in the vault and it could still be that the element of surprise is still their more preferred and valued method of exposure if she is a sure thing or even near sure thing. This is true because they would still have plenty of time to push her once she was unleashed on the public and that would perhaps more effectively steer us to the incredible online traction Sanchez has achieved and create an even more formidable buzz which would subsequently propel her to even greater popularity and possible stardom.
Jessica Sanchez is far from a sure thing but she has got to be the first
American Idol contestant to have over 44 million hits on her YouTube account before even having her audition shown. And here's the kicker: her
America's Got Talent audition wasn't even shown. She was a wild card picked by singer Brandy and she was ultimately eliminated during the semifinals so where are all these hits coming from?
This is all pure speculation of course but my guess is that, especially given her young and rather precious age at the time of her stint on
AGT, and the relative youth of YouTube itself which alone practically guaranteed even bigger buzz because the novelty of the site still hadn't completely worn off at this point, that most of the hits came at the time of her stint on the show.
Unless somebody can credibly come forward to disclose statistical tacking of her social media from her time on the show and the time
since she was on, it is virtually impossible to accurately quantify what kind of entity Sanchez will be on
American Idol. She is, after all, simply listed under the "eighteen additional acts" section of her region's auditioning round on the Season 1 section of
America's Got Talent's Wikipeida page, so we have very little to work with.
Still, other questions remain equally prominent concerning her own possible emerging prominence since she has been home schooled for the past three years after experiencing being picked on, interestingly enough, in her local public system beforehand. Was it also a move on her family's part to move towards launching her career? Families with a child prodigy tend to not exercise any sense of restraint in terms of the scope of the child's talent and ambition, but a family home schooling their children also are probably benefiting from parents willing to place an emphasis on eliminating potentially corruptive outside forces that could negatively influence and interfere with the child's professional progress, but either way she clearly has been groomed to be a star and at 16 there's likely a very understandable sense of urgency on her family's part to advance her career now while she still has at least some more easily recollective familiarity with her next viewing audience and while she is still a peer of the key youth demographic.
She has extended her social media presence from just Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to a well hit blog on Tumblr and an account on Formspring, the latter being where I have gathered much of my information from. While many lesser known artists hold accounts on Formspring, all holders of such accounts also hold one very notably important intangible distinction and that is a clear and present professionally serious
intent with their music and art as well as anything else they are looking to plug and gain buzz with. It's how I know she prefers things quiet to loud, the night to morning, warm to cold, bracelets over necklaces, or green over yellow. It's how I've discovered that she can't decide whether gospel or rap gets the tiebreaker between the two of them. And it's how I have acquired the all important lowdown that Sanchez well prefers Twitter to Facebook with her communications.
While updating the social media statistical tracking I embarked on when I started researching Ms. Sanchez I noticed slight upticks in her social media traffic. It had been just a handful of days since I had tracked the statistics for her social media for the first time and just a few days later there was an approximate average of over 2,000 hits per site over the 2-3 ensuing days. She has one video on her
official YouTube account (which is actually not the one baring her full name) covering Beyonce's "Love On Top" that I first noticed was at 428,000+ hits and by Monday, January 16th it was fast approaching 432,000 so she seemed to be averaging close to 1,000 additional views daily. Just two days later, on Wednesday January 18th, it had reached
605,064 by 6:10 PM EST.
Another cover uploaded on her website was a Taylor Hill cover of the Bruno Mars song "It Will Rain" which was posted on January 11, 2012 and just five days later had over 15,800 hits on; certainly not dominant but also still not too shabby for a still largely unknown singer. And that's the thing; she remains an enigma. She remains the biggest wild card going into the new season of
American Idol.
Her social media appeal is not without its own limitations. On January 16th, she had just 1,990 "Likes" and 125 "Talking About This" statistics. As of January 18th, it up to 2,050 "Likes" and up to 143 "Talking About This" hits. Her
Twitter account has just 7,122 followers as of January 18th so she's not blowing up the Twitterverse either. Despite what is still a very decent following for someone still so under the radar, especially since despite her pro-Twitter declaration, she does not use it with any intense constancy. Still, it's an extremely impressive following for someone who hasn't been completely shed of her anonymity yet. The numbers do heavily suggest that this is about to change quite drastically. She has managed to accumulate a rather healthy, if still rather stealth, underground following and even movement. Sanchez's
blog has over 183,787 "plays" on it as of January 18th.
This doesn't mean that just any regular person can't run up modest or even large totals online with their personal social media apparatus. It just means that someone on the cups of gaining widespread recognition, and of being reminded about her stint on
America's Got Talent, is on the verge of exploding into a global sensation. It is not a clear and guaranteed path to victory so to speak but at least
appears to be crystal clear is that never before has a contestant on one of the singing competition shows has amassed such a formidable all around social media machine and while the bulk of it does in fact rest with the views total on her official YouTube account, one can only ponder how someone with very limited exposure six years ago as a 10 year-old on a talent show much broader in its scope, has attracted an online audience speaking strictly from a viewing perspective, that is not that much more than three times behind the views total than original
American Idol champion Kelly Clarkson (107,800,000+ as of January 16th). Carrie Underwood, the season 3 champion, clocks in at just under 134,000,000 as of January 16th.
Finally, one of the most interesting side notes of Jessica Sanchez's journey so far is simply the join date posted on her YouTube account. She last performed on
America's Got Talent on August 9, 2006 and was eliminated the next night. On August 11, 2006, the account was created. When I mentioned serious intent this is an obvious example. It's not because she simply created an account; of course that was going to happen and yes, even in 2006 when you must take
into account that YouTube itself was still very young. It does represent a very quick answer, response if you will, to her elimination and the decision made by her and her family to move ahead with creating an online forum and presence for her music and promotion.
If there's a criticism concerning this move to be made, it might be that they didn't create it
during her run on the show. Then again, they might have purposely held back because of her age at the time and it's very plausible that they didn't want their barely 10 year-old daughter being that accessible, for a lack of a better word, to online voyeurs. Granted, someone that serious about becoming noticed, despite her young age (and demographically speaking largely
because of it) with obviously strong familial support, tends to put everything out there as soon as humanly possible (both during and after being on TV).
The strength of her mystery, mystique, and overall intrigue still rests with the strength of her YouTube activity. It is still the overlying component of her theoretically enormous appeal and ceiling. It is still what has kept me up at night contemplating as we move back into the reigning champion's territory, it's home field advantage, or whatever appropriate sports metaphor you wish to inject because
Idol is still tops and soon we will know if Jessica E. Sanchez will be well on her way to being tops as well.
Follow Jamie Cole of Himay Co. on
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