What on earth is going on with American Idol?

[Little-Acorn]

I used to like the show because the kids were trying so hard, and many of them sounded good.

Today? The show has been on for 3/4 of an hour, and nobody has sung anything yet.

If I wanted grief, pain, conflicts, sob stories, arguments, backbiting, etc., I'd stay home during the day and watch soap operas. (and there's a reason I don't.) I can get that, it seem, on any show.

When did it stop being a singing competition?

Are they wondering why their ratings are falling?

[Mr. P]

Simon left. I haven't watch since. From what I hear ratings wise and hear here an there, I'll bet this is the last season.

[Little-Acorn]

Simon left. I haven't watch since. From what I hear ratings wise and hear here an there, I'll bet this is the last season.

I doubt Simon's departure is the reason they spent most of their first hour showing sob stories, conflicts, griping, trouble etc., everything except singing.

Is it just me? Or are more and more shows out of Hollywood, featuring this same griping, whining, social problems etc.? I don't watch that many of them, so I'm in a poor position to judge.

Couple years ago, my son got a bit part as a background actor in a show called "House", that I hadn't heard of. Looked it up, and the premise seemed terrific: An experimental hospital where weird and unusual medical cases come up, often involving life and death situations, and a tiger team of young doctors going after them, led by an eccentric older doc who was supposedly a brilliant intuitive diagnostician. But when I tuned in, what did I find? The same griping, sob stories (of the doctors, not the patients), backbiting, social conflicts. Plus conferences and diagnostic meetings that were unrealistic to the point of being bizarre.

My wife had heard good things about the show "Glee", about a high school choir at an arts school. Turned out that the actual singing and dancing scenes were indeed very good, usually. But the majority of the show? The same whining, griping, sob stories, backbiting, social conflicts.

Is there like one guy who writes all these shows? A guy who was neglected as a child and now writes about his own childhood, putting the same misery and bickering into every show, regardless of what the show is supposed to be about?

I recall a while back where there was some kind of "writer's strike" in Hollywood. It knocked a number of shows off the air as I recall, or threatened to. Does this indicate that all shows are written by the same group? Maybe one group with a unified, if miserable, view of the world?

Hard to tell how that could affect a show like American Idol - I would have thought that the various competitors's problems we're seeing, couldn't have been scripted by some Hollywood team. But literally thousands of kids are competing, and we only see maybe a few dozen. And it seems that ALL of the few dozen, are beset with - you guessed it - whining, griping, sob stories, backbiting, social conflicts. Could it be that the producers are picking the ones they give air time to, based as much on the pain and travail of their personal lives, as the quality of their singing and earnestness of their compeitition?

Is it just me? Or is all of Hollywood obsessed with crying, whining, sobbing, and misery, and sees no point in producing anything else?