If there was any doubt what kind of ratings monster that American Idol is, it is becoming more and more clear as time goes on. Last week, Idol went head to head with the Grammy Awards. Idol destroyed the Grammy’s in the ratings. 28.3 million watched American Idol while only 15.1 million watched the Grammy Awards. It was the least watched Grammy Awards since the 1970’s. The Grammy ratings went up slightly after Idol went off. Idol viewership was down slightly as this was the first episode of the season that hasn’t been seen by over 30 million people. This leads to this week. Many people have been wondering how things would go when Idol went head to head with the Olympics for the first time ever. Round one went to American Idol. Idol got a 15.1 rating on Tuesday night while the Olympics got a 10.0 in their competitive hour. Last night’s ratings for Idol were even more one sided. Idol got a 16.2 while the Olympics pulled in a 9.1.
Staying with this season’s Idol, the drama with some of these contestants on this season’s Hollywood episodes of American Idol is putting the memories of the Kimberly Caldwell/Julia DeMato season 2 drama to shame. I’ve been watching American Idol for many years now and I’ve never seen anything on this show like what those twin brothers have been doing. Isn’t it just wild? One of them actually quit the competition for both of them this week while the other brother had no clue. Why did he quit? He thought his brother got cut when he didn’t. So, they went back and tried to get back into the competition which was granted. It got to the point where Simon said that he was sick of their attitude and a ton of the other contestants started to cheer the comment. After the show last night, it was told that the twins have had some legal problems and are now out of the competition. Then, there was the one girl who kept changing groups. She was in her original group and decided she didn’t like them and went to join another group. She then got fed up with the new group and went back to her original group asking to be let back in. They reluctantly let her back in. We’re now down to the final 24. 12 guys and 12 girls. Next week we start voting. The girls will perform on Tuesday with the guys performing on Wednesday. Not really any huge surprises of who got in and who was left out. I still stick with what I said last week as far as who I like so far. There are some really likable people in this final group. The competition definitely picks up steam next week so get ready to vote for your favorites.
A poll was done of consumers for the Associated Press and Rolling Stone dealing with the current state of CD’s and music. It was really interesting and it spoke a lot of the things that I have been thinking lately. The music industry has taken a hit lately big time. 618 million albums were sold in 2005. To give a comparison, album sales were at 762 million in 2001. However, 352 million tracks were sold digitally in 2005. It is obvious that some people are downloading songs from sites like I Tunes instead of buying full albums. 71% of those polled found that 99 cents to buy a song is either fair or a bargain. 80% of people polled found that downloading music for free is stealing. Here are some interesting things from the poll. 74% found CD’s to be too expensive. 58% of people think that music is getting worse. One REALLY interesting find in this poll for me was that 49% of the target 18-34 age group thinks that music is getting worse. When asked why sales were down with albums overall, it was split on reasons. 33% thought it was because of illegal downloads. 29% think it was because of competition from other forms of entertainment. 21% of the people thought it was the quality of the music getting worse. 13% said that CD’s were too expensive. Wow. This was really interesting to read. I guess I’ll weigh in on this. This is coming from a big music fan. I often have to have some music going in the background when I’m working on something or listen to some audio show. When I’m in the car, I have the radio on or am listening to a CD. This is also from a fan that used to buy a ton of CD’s a year. To compare it to last year, I bought possibly 3 CD’s last year. I just don’t buy CD’s anymore and the days of paying $20 for one song on a CD is long gone. How many times have you bought a CD only to like the one song you wanted while the rest of the CD is bad? Now, you can pay 99 cents for that one song. It sounds like a no brainer to me. One thing that always gets talked about is how your music taste changes as you get older. When people say that music is getting worse, it usually gets blamed on the fact that someone is getting older. This poll really threw that theory for a loop. Now it is the target 18-34 age range that is saying that music is getting worse. I too share that opinion as I’m just not crazy about most of the music out there right now. I just have certain artists that I like and support. As far as buying CD’s, I stick with my favorite singers and just buy their albums. I often find myself listening to 90’s music shows whether it be on the radio such as Backtrack USA 90’s or the 90’s channel on XM Radio. I just thought I’d share that poll cause I thought it shared some good opinions on the state of the music industry right now especially when it throws a lot of the music industry excuses out the window.
I got the chance to watch the movie “Elizabethtown” over the weekend. Besides Serenity, this is the best movie that I have seen in a while. The movie stars Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. One thing you’ll notice immediately is how many stars are in this movie such as Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, and Jessica Biel among others. Orlando Bloom plays Drew Baylor who has basically hit rock bottom at the beginning of this movie due to serious problems with his work. He gets a phone call from his sister that their dad, Mitch Baylor, has passed away. The phone call comes at a good time as you’ll see when you watch it. Mitch had been in Kentucky visiting his extended family so Drew is sent to Kentucky to handle the arrangements. On the plane ride over, a fight attendant named Claire, played by Kirsten Dunst, who offers her help with his trip. That basically sets up the story for you. I was really impressed with Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst as I thought they did a great job with these characters. I found it interesting with the way a lot of this movie was done as far as how they edited the meeting the family scenes. Interesting in a good way though. The movie runs about 2 hours but it flew by as I got hooked into this movie really early. The scenery is fun to look at where it feels like you are on a road trip. It’s hard not to notice the big soundtrack to this movie and sure enough, there are three separate soundtrack albums for this movie. I give this movie a big thumbs up and recommend it.
If you didn’t already get your order in for the limited edition Friends box from Warner Brothers, it looks like you may be out of luck. A few people have said that they have received their order forms back from Warner Brothers marked “Return To Sender, Offer Closed – Inventory Exhausted”. It looks like they have run out of them for now. None of the boxes have been mailed out yet and a notice has been sent out saying that the boxes have been delayed but will be shipped February 28th.
Sticking with the Friends theme, NBC has announced that Joey will return to the lineup beginning Tuesday night March 7th. It will air at 7pm.
To follow up on the Firefly stuff from last week, Kristen from E Online is saying that the new CW network is considering bringing back Firefly as either a series, miniseries, or movie for this next TV season.
It looks like the storyline family feud between Rory and Lorelei on Gilmore Girls this season not only upset the fans but upset some of the cast as well. Lauren Graham said that she wasn’t happy about the idea of Rory and Lorelei not speaking. She added that she missed working with Alexis Bledel every day. Graham said that she didn’t think it made sense for her character to go to that extreme of cutting Rory out of her life and not try harder to work things out. She said that she questioned the writers of the show more this year than ever before. The show’s creators defend their decision saying that it was good to show a more mother-daughter relationship with the problems that can develop as it was a way to shake up Rory’s world. There is still talk that the Pallidino’s may not be involved after this season and leave the show to pursue other things as their contracts are up It has not been decided but there is talk that there will be a cliffhanger ending to this season. Graham said it would be hard to not have the show’s creators not involved in the show next season. The production company is said to be locking the contracts down for the cast for another year with talk that next season could be the last for the show. When asked about how long the show could go for, Amy Sherman-Pallidino had this to say “They’ve come to us before and asked point-blank how long we think the show can go and we say it’s a family show, it can go on forever. If `7th Heaven’ could have gone on for 10 years, why couldn’t this show go for 10 years? There’s no reason. They’re going to be hard-pressed to assemble a cast this good on television again.” My thoughts on the whole storyline as I didn’t dislike it like a lot of people did. I understand why they did it but I was very ready for Lorelei and Rory to reunite as the show just didn’t have it’s main core with the characters being apart. I’m hoping that the writers decide to stick around with the show as they are extremely good at what they do.
Survivor saw the four tribes merged into two tribes last week. Melinda was sent packing as her and Cerie are victims of an alliance that has already been set. Wow, I think I would vote out Shane. He was ready to quit last week and was telling people to vote him out. He had already told three other people that he wanted to form an alliance. They had their alliance of four and he then decided that he didn’t want to be there as he is missing his family. He told everyone on the tribe to vote him out but then he changed his mind and decided to stay. I wouldn’t want to be in an alliance with someone that is flip flopping so much on wanting to quit. Survivor opened without the full theme song opening last week which I believe was the first time that it has ever happened.
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