After tonight’s SYTYCD elimination, I went over to Television Without Pity’s forums, mostly because I am a masochist. In between the usual ranting about how Philipchbeeb is ruining the show for them and so forth, I also found the usual bevy of conspiracy theories. Melissa is older than 30 because she has lines on her face! They are manipulating the Bottom Three couples so that people’s votes don’t matter! And so forth. (These complaints are always trotted out for American Idol as well, but I don’t care about Idol so I can let them go.)
I would just like to make it clear: these people are full of crap. I mean, they are full of crap on the level of the guy at that party who tells you that Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to KFC because they weren’t legally allowed to call it “chicken” any more, because they invented centipede-chickens with ten drumsticks apiece. They are graduates of the School Of Somebody Told Me.
How do I know they are full of crap? Because 19 Entertainment and Fox have created a happy fun television show that A) invites contestants to compete for a large cash prize, and B) invites the public to vote, at cost, to determine winners. In the case of both groups, the contestants, the show is therefore responsible to them to present the rules of the show publicly and openly, and to abide by those rules. Were the producers to not do this, then they would be liable to both groups; any contestants who felt slighted would be able to sue for the “loss of a chance,” which is well-established in contract law as potential grounds for a suit. There would similarly be grounds for a class action lawsuit on the public’s behalf.
This is why every episode ends with a disclaimer in small print admitting that the show’s producers might just possibly monkey around with partner selection and dance selection as they see fit. (I snark about non-random dance selection as much as anybody else, but if they say the dances are randomly assigned, they’re either assigning them purely randomly, or assigning them randomly and then offering a “trade” option of some sort that the dancers can take advantage of if they wish, or something along those lines.) It’s all about liability.
Seriously, it’s a multimillion dollar television franchise. They’re not gonna kill the cash cow with something that stupid.
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“Seriously, it’s a multimillion dollar television franchise. They’re not gonna kill the cash cow with something that stupid.”
Especially not after game show fixing scandals nearly destroyed TV in the 50s.
I like this. It’s the conspiracy theorist’s translation of Niven’s observation about psychic powers, viz that we can know they don’t exist because if they did someone would be making money off them (and governments would be taxing them). Now, apply it to other conspiracies (Marilyn killed JFK, Elvis faked the moon landings, etc). Demonstrate how the truth is out there, where “there” is formally defined as “in the accountants’ ledgers”. It could be a new career: fiscal mythbusting!
Um, MGK, are you familiar at all with the plethora of phone voting scandals that plagued the UK a couple of years back?
A lot of things came to light – to the extent that Simon Cowell had to publically say at the start of the most recent series of The X-Factor, the direct descendant of the show which sent Nigel Lythcoe to fame, one of the top two reality shows in the country, that it wasn’t fixed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7561567.stm Which does actually mean it’s not entirely unreasonable to suggest such a thing may be fudged.
Paul O’Brien speaks about it here. http://ifdestroyed.blogspot.com/2007/10/can-i-interest-you-in-phone-vote.html [It’s worth noting that Ant and Dec are huge here. The two of them are A household name, and definitely among biggest showbiz names. Who, incidentally, returned an award at the British Comedy Awards, after that viewer-nominated award had been rigged. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-564778/Ant-Dec-want-award-phone-vote-rigged-Robbie-Williams-wanted-win.html ]
It’s not totally unheard of. Yes, it’s not that likely. It’s not that implausible, though.
Jonny, I’m aware of it (I read Paul’s blog too). But it makes trickery of that sort less likely, not moreso. Lythgoe and Cowell are both notorious for being nigh-fanatical about how their programs are presented and managed, and now that a cautionary tale exists as to the potential costs incurred by contest manipulations, is it really feasible that they would ignore it?
This makes me long for the glories of Big Brother (US). The lack of public voting (for the winner anyway) and the contracts all the participants sign mean that they can do basically -anything- to the houseguests.
And they do throw challenges and they do very selectively give information. Big Brother being slighly rigged for maximum entertainment value is like Britney Spears lip synching in concert. Not only does everyone know, but they don’t actually care.
But that is a completely separate type of show.
The ones that are an actual competition? Voted by the audience? The last thing they want is a law suit or the bad publicity. I mean why risk the billion dollar idol franchise over keeping a singer for another week.
MGK, the thing is, it wasn’t just a one off thing. It was more that this sort of thing was systematic – ITV, (which is probably the worst UK TV group, not because of its quality so much through being utterly populist, yet not actually producing a single thing worth watching – bland to the point of John Major, while being supposedly the premiere commercial channel) had an entire channel which was games essentially designed to rip off as many gullible people as possible. And be unwinnable. And it kept happening, even after it was exposed.
But I’m largely playing devil’s advocate. I do think it’s incredibly unlikely (though the example of AntandDec’s show would be the relevant one – there they were able to blame some producers who fell on their swords and the names “didn’t know anything about it”). I misread your post as saying it was utterly stupid of people to believe such theories. (Which I’m still not entirely convinced. Probably stupid to think that’s definitely not the case, but I’m cynical enough to not want to definitely rule it out. Actually, have you ever seen Charlie Brooker? This clip from his Screenwipe series is somewhat relevant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI Very unlikely, but I can see some very heavy pushing being done to shape things into better stories. Having never seen SYTYCD or American Idol, I really can’t argue.) As opposed to your actual thesis that they’re wrong.
I would tend to trust the guy in law school for this sort of thing…
Sweet manger sleeping Jesus. If people cared half as much about the veracity of voting that MATTERS, GWB never would have been president. MGK’s extremely valid point about liability aside, who cares? Are you entertained? Good. Shut up. Are you not? Change the channel. And it’s not just TWOP. This nonsense is everywhere. Did you know Nigel held back better dancers from season 5 in order to make season 6 more entertaining? It’s true. I read it somewhere.
“Quiz Show: The Broadway Musical.”
Actually, that’s a theory that’s at least grounded in realism. Season 6, a fall season, is going to be a lot more important than season 5 – it’s essentially SYTYCD’s “promotion” to Fox’s serious big-time. It does make sense that Nigel and the other producers might want to make sure their talent was top-notch for the sixth season. It explains a lot of things (incredibly talented dancers like Natalie and Ryan’s respective not-getting-on-the-shows, relative nontalents like Tony and Jonathan making the cut this time around, etc.).
After all, season 5 is essentially shaping up to be the season of a few people who couldn’t realistically be kept off the show any longer (Brandon, Philip, maybe Jeanette) and a bunch of talented and not-very-charismatic also-rans.
Ugh. Not you too. I say this with the utmost respect ’cause I think you’re all kinds a’ smart and I dig your writing but that’s complete and utter horse shit. For one, it reveals a lack of understanding of how the TV business works. There are a myriad of people involved in casting. Not just producers, the studio and the network all way in. We’re talking a cornucopia of executives, all of whom are terrified of ratings taking any kind of dip at all, lest they get beheaded by their corporate overlords. All of these people having a say easily explains the issues you raise. I’ve been on these calls. Trust me. Fear coupled with total lack of taste leads to crazy choices.
For twosies, you don’t just write off a season hoping you’ll get a stronger lead in for Glee. Not to mention, don’t you think a lackluster summer season would depress ratings for the fall (which I’d put money on actually happening, considering how less than awesome this seasons been)? Then there’s the fact that thousands of people auditioned and hundreds made it to Vegas. You really think there weren’t two or three casts worth of capable dancers? And they’re holding auditions for season 6, with thousands more dancers. You think they were scared they couldn’t come up with another 20? Poppycock, I say.
Ok. Mental break’s over. I’m going back to Matt Taibbi’s article on how Goldman Sachs is destroying the world. Hopefully I won’t decide to kill myself before it’s over.
I think there’s a middle ground here between the notion that season 5 purposely cast lamers because they wanted to bank all the superstars for the Fall. After all, we’ve also always had cannon fodder to pad out the beginning of a season, and the show has been banking contestants for future editions from the second season (when Hok’s visa issues DQ’ed him from that season, and when that skinny blonde barbie got injured during Vegas and Nigel gave her a free pass for the next year except she got knocked up) in order to lay the groundwork for viewer attachment in subsequent seasons. It’s just become rather ridiculous and obvious recently, which naturally prompts people to suspect underhanded motives, but really, it’s business as usual, just more so.
That said, I do think that the talent has been pretty steady if not improving over the course of the show’s existence (whatever lack there is, IMO, comes down to personality, charisma, and telegenicness, and if you want, pan-generic versatility) simply by virtue of the numbers: more kids are trying out means a wider pool of talent, which means they can bring more of them to Vegas, which means that the casting for top 20 can be pickier and choosier for what they want without necessarily sacrificing talent. They can lay the groundwork for the future while still addressing the short-term bottom-line.
Where this formula gets problematized, in the minds of viewers, is with the final cuts, because the kids we’d been getting to know (and with Bianca Revels and Natalie Reid, we’d been getting to know them an extra ‘year’) are summarily dismissed in favor of these strangers who ultimately became our top 20. These strangers are equally talented (in different ways), but the one thing they lack(ed), in the opinions of viewers, is the familiarity that Natalie or Bianca had, and their unfamiliarity/unknownness ultimately translates to THE TOP 20 SUCKS OMG.
of course they’re wrong. they watch sytycd.