Fox ‘apologizes’ for overlong ‘Idol’ finale being even more overlong than they thought it would be
“American Idol” viewers who worship at their altar via TiVo or a TiVo-like device were horrified to discover that the two-hour results show Wednesday night ran 10 minutes long, thus preventing them from seeing the giant girl win over the guy who does sound effects. In other words, they missed the whole POINT of the show.
Fox has responded by issuing a statement of apology — although it’s worth noting that the apology stops short of actually accepting responsibility for the mistake:
We’re sorry that DVR users may have missed the conclusion of the American Idol broadcast. It was always our intention to bring the show in on time, but just as with any live sports, variety, awards or entertainment event, there is no way to absolutely guarantee that the show will end exactly on the hour. Fox and the producers apologize to those viewers who were inconvenienced.
Comparing the “American Idol” finale to a sports or awards show sounds reasonable, until you realize that sports and awards shows have a lot of unpredictable variables: overtimes, time-outs, and the unscripted acceptance speeches. Everything about the “AI” finale, on the other hand, was completely scripted. The only ad-libbing was during the three “Golden Idol” award segments, and the “winners” probably didn’t take up any more time than the producers guessed they would.
Everything else was planned and had a firm, predictable running time. The length of each song isn’t going to differ from rehearsal to performance by more than a few seconds. The producers do a show like this every week; they know how long to allow for applause, ovations, and so forth. In other words, the show had no unforeseeable surprises. Adding up the elements beforehand (commercials, songs, etc.), there’s no way you’d have come up with “120 minutes on the nose.”
It makes sense that they’d plan a little more than they actually had room for. It’s better to be too long than to be too short, at least when it comes to TV broadcasting. So what should they have done? The obvious thing would be to do what “Saturday Night Live,” your local news, and every other live program does all the time: Cut something. You’re running long? It’s 9:45 and you’ve only reached the song that was supposed to happen at 9:40? Cut something.
Yeah, yeah, it’s so sad to rehearse a number and then have to cancel it, or to have a surprise guest not appear after all, or to tell the band and the singer to do two verses instead of three. Boo hoo. Like I said, live programs do it all the time. Pretty much every time, in fact.
By not taking measures to ensure the climax of its broadcast occurred on time, Fox was basically saying, “This show is too important to follow the regular rules. This is ‘AMERICAN IDOL,’ for crying out loud!” The insincere apology that refuses to acknowledge the judgment error just smells like more hubris.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
The thing is, FOX really doesn’t make much off of the TiVo-ers, since they generally skip the commercials. Keeping that in mind makes it a lot funnier to read FOX’s statement. They’re like, “Screw you, DVR users. Next time watch it live so you can see the advertisements and maybe we’ll let you see the whole thing.”
May 26th, 2007 at 9:12 am
“More importantly, watch it live so it shows up in the ratings tomorrow morning. That’s what really matters to us.”
Some years back I was keeping track of the times for a live telecast of the Miss Ohio pageant. I noted that we were slowly falling farther behind. We probably hadn’t allowed enough for applause and other transition times. I kept the producer informed, and he finally decided we’d have to cut a production number. I felt a little guilty — performers had worked hard on the number that now would never be seen — but timekeeping was my job, and we did finish up on time. Eric’s right; it can be done.
May 26th, 2007 at 9:40 am
And it’s not just TiVo users who were inconvenienced. What if you didn’t have TiVo and there was a show on another channel that started at 10, and you really, really wanted to see the beginning?
May 26th, 2007 at 11:43 am
How funny. It really amuses me to picture some hard-core idol fans sitting through two-hours of fluff (although they might not have seen like that) only to miss the only 10 seconds they’re actually watching for. Really though, any experienced TiVo user should know that for finale shows you have to record the program following your most-beloved shows if you want to be sure not to miss anything.
May 26th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
This is why I skip DVR altogether and just download the shows I want to watch.
May 26th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Here’s the real question: What were all you people doing watching “American Idol” at all in the first place?
May 26th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Yes, we watched it on our DVR and yes, it sucked to miss the ending. Really, though, other than revenge against us evil TiVo people, what would be the point of FOX doing this? I will not change my viewing habits. I will just dislike FOX more. If I choose to watch Idol ever again, I will just do as Tina says and run my DVR timer longer to cover my butt. And I’m sure they’ve got sponsors who feel they’re getting their money’s worth regardless of if I watch their traditional commercials. This show is the epitome of product placement (Ford, Cingular, Coca-Cola . . .). I don’t even have to watch their commercials to see commercials, you know?
May 27th, 2007 at 7:45 am
I love American Idol, but I don’t even watch the finals. I rarely even watch the Wednesday night results shows. If I’m home, I flip them on with 5-10 minutes left in the broadcast. If I’m out with friends instead, I figure who was kicked off will be headline news the next morning. Why waste your time on fluff when there are far more important things to do? Well…one of those things is usually college homework, so maybe procrastinating would make sense…but we’ll ignore that.
May 27th, 2007 at 9:14 am
What I don’t get is how people ar surprised that this happened. American Idol quite often goes over just to screw the DVR users. the night before when we set it up to record we decided that we’d better record the news just after idol as we knew it was going to run over.
May 27th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I suspect that at least some of the overage came from Clive Davis’ interminably long “State of Idol” address in the middle. For some reason, I kept getting visions of Elder David B. Haight telling stories of football and malt shoppes in Oakley and cranking up the Tin Lizzie, but I digress….
And yes, the logical thing would have been to cut something in the middle, among which there were no end of choices:
- Sanjaya (duh)
- Tony Bennett (he’s griped that AI is too nasty, let’s prove it to him)
- Bette Midler (who had absolutely zero to do with Idol)
- Green Day (um, okay, angsty song notwithstanding, what were they doing there?)
And of course, removing any/all of the Golden Idol crap, in which we learned that AI is still happy to pick on the delusional and the mentally challenged, would have served everyone well.
May 27th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Here’s a thought…Why the hell would you waste space on your TiVo or DVR on the American Idol finale!? And them comparing it to sporting events, come on…
May 29th, 2007 at 6:59 am
I’m just glad the season finale of house wasn’t on afterwards. I would have been very upset if my DVR recorded 10 minutes of AI instead of the opening scenes of House.
May 29th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Wow. That sounds like a perfect Idol results show. Just DVR the news and you only have to watch 10 minutes for the results!
May 29th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Yes, it’s true. I actually DVRed this while I was in Hawaii. Of course, we came across the winner before we had a chance to watch it. But, then again, it was no surprise anyway.
People who don’t DVR overtime have no right using the technology. A little power can be dangerous.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:10 am
It’s times like this wherein I discover I am truly odd. This DVR/TiVo talk is Greek to me. As is the need to see American Idol.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:43 am
I cannot believe Idol brings in 72 million viewers per week. It’s karaoke!