Australian Idol Manipulation
This year’s Australian Idol competition has been plagued with scandal. First there was the Hillsong conspiracy where the Hillsong Church was accused if unfairly using their large numbers to vote for the contestants affiliated with the church. This theory remains unsubstantiated.
It seems that there may be another scandal that lurks beneath the depths of Australian Idol – voter manipulation.
Australian Idol has always advertised themselves as a singing competition where the Australian public decides who stays, goes and ultimately wins based on the talent of the competitors, but after close observation of this season as well as taking notice of the comments of contestants booted from the show, some of which are somewhat disgruntled by their fate, I have found myself beginning to wonder just how much of the so-called “public vote” is in fact influenced by judge’s comments rather then the performances?
I acknowledge that it is the job of the judges to critique the performance of the contestants and they do that but I have been noticing that there have been increasingly more obvious attempts at angling for certain contestants to leave the show.
It seems to me that if the people behind Australian Idol do not think a contestant would be marketable should they go on to win, the judges will then angle their comments to emphasise the negative and downplay the positive.
This recently happened to Carl Riseley, a finalist in this year’s competition. Earlier in the finals the judges criticised all of his performances and basically told him that he couldn’t do swing all the time and to try something else. So he complied and did something else. On Rock Night, Kyle told him “I don’t think you (Carl) have to run that jazzy vibe through everything”.
The next week he sang Earth, Wind and Fire’s September and seemed uncomfortable. He then reverted back to swing and did a fantastic job on Brit Pop night and was told by Mark Holden that he “admired his single minded strategy to stay with his niche” and said one night he would love to see him do a slower ballad. The judges seem to have short memories as three weeks previously he got an absolute caning for singing Coldplay’s Clocks.
It seems like a lose-lose situation being told to do something one week only to comply and be told the next week that they should never have done it. However, despite this and a few not so great performances, Carl defied the odds and stayed in. The people behind the show realised the fan base Carl had and that he was a potential cash cow, and towards they end of his run the judges changed their tunes and were praising him to the skies and awarded him a coveted touchdown for a song that was frankly not as good as some of his others.
The show then had to turn their scheming attentions else where and the new victim was Tarisai Vushe. All of a sudden the judges hated everything that they had once loved about her. They humiliated and provoked her on national television which resulted in a meltdown on Tarisai’s behalf which also was broadcast on television. She was then the next voted out of the show.
Below is a video of her performance and the resulting criticisms that caused the blow up that followed and was ultimately her downfall.
And this is the now infamous dummy spit.
Was it fair that they showed what happened after the show with Tarisai, it can be argued that the public needs to see all sides of the contestant, good or bad, but they have never done it to other contestants?
In the interviews that Tarisai did with the media in the days following her departure from the show, she was still obviously angry at the judge’s comments and believed them to be the reason she had been sent packing.
In an interview with The Age, Tarisai said that she “had no regrets about losing her cool and just put it down to being human”.
This was all a blatant case of Australian Idol manipulating the public on how to vote so that it best profits them.
It seems that there may be another scandal that lurks beneath the depths of Australian Idol – voter manipulation.
Australian Idol has always advertised themselves as a singing competition where the Australian public decides who stays, goes and ultimately wins based on the talent of the competitors, but after close observation of this season as well as taking notice of the comments of contestants booted from the show, some of which are somewhat disgruntled by their fate, I have found myself beginning to wonder just how much of the so-called “public vote” is in fact influenced by judge’s comments rather then the performances?
It seems to me that if the people behind Australian Idol do not think a contestant would be marketable should they go on to win, the judges will then angle their comments to emphasise the negative and downplay the positive.
Carl Riseley
This recently happened to Carl Riseley, a finalist in this year’s competition. Earlier in the finals the judges criticised all of his performances and basically told him that he couldn’t do swing all the time and to try something else. So he complied and did something else. On Rock Night, Kyle told him “I don’t think you (Carl) have to run that jazzy vibe through everything”.
The next week he sang Earth, Wind and Fire’s September and seemed uncomfortable. He then reverted back to swing and did a fantastic job on Brit Pop night and was told by Mark Holden that he “admired his single minded strategy to stay with his niche” and said one night he would love to see him do a slower ballad. The judges seem to have short memories as three weeks previously he got an absolute caning for singing Coldplay’s Clocks.
It seems like a lose-lose situation being told to do something one week only to comply and be told the next week that they should never have done it. However, despite this and a few not so great performances, Carl defied the odds and stayed in. The people behind the show realised the fan base Carl had and that he was a potential cash cow, and towards they end of his run the judges changed their tunes and were praising him to the skies and awarded him a coveted touchdown for a song that was frankly not as good as some of his others.
Tarisai Vushe
The show then had to turn their scheming attentions else where and the new victim was Tarisai Vushe. All of a sudden the judges hated everything that they had once loved about her. They humiliated and provoked her on national television which resulted in a meltdown on Tarisai’s behalf which also was broadcast on television. She was then the next voted out of the show.
Below is a video of her performance and the resulting criticisms that caused the blow up that followed and was ultimately her downfall.
And this is the now infamous dummy spit.
Was it fair that they showed what happened after the show with Tarisai, it can be argued that the public needs to see all sides of the contestant, good or bad, but they have never done it to other contestants?
In the interviews that Tarisai did with the media in the days following her departure from the show, she was still obviously angry at the judge’s comments and believed them to be the reason she had been sent packing.
In an interview with The Age, Tarisai said that she “had no regrets about losing her cool and just put it down to being human”.
“Being accused of being fake when you are not is very annoying because I am a nice person but, you know, when people push me like that to the point, I just lose it.”
“I think (Holden and Dicko’s) comments on Sunday really diluted things and kind of caused me to be booted off the show”
This was all a blatant case of Australian Idol manipulating the public on how to vote so that it best profits them.
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