This from Defenders of wildlife. The video speaks for itself!
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sunday, September 07, 2008
America's Got Talent
We've been watching America's Got Talent for a few years now. Over all the concept of the show is great: you make America watch as hundreds of supposedly talented people parade their talents in front of a live audience and three judges vote to allow them through to the next stage or not.
Then you allow the top 40 who have made it through to perform and let the viewers vote the number down to 20. Eventually one winner is chosen.
The judges are Piers Morgan, from England, Sharon Osborne, and David Hosselhoff. The show is hosted by Jerry Springer this year (and last).
The judges are kind of a problem as is Jerry Springer. They are sometimes hard to take, especially Jerry and David.
The English version of this show is MUCH better. The judges include Piers and also Amanda Holden who is way sexier and cuter than Sharon, and Simon Cowell who is now probably one of the richest TV personalities on the planet having masterminded American Idol and now these talent shows as well. The hosts in England are two young blokes who are way less obnoxious than Jerry Springer. Also the quality of talent seems much better in England and the show seems to flow smoother than the American show.
For example...the American show took too much time with the auditions and let too many through to the finals. So they had to let about a third of them go all of a sudden, with no further explanation in the beginning of the first Las Vegas Showdown episode.
The American show also let us see too many of the lame acts and too few of the good acts. This means that now that we are at the stage where we are seeing the best of the best, there are many whom we have really never seen before.
Despite all this bitching, the show tends to be very entertaining. There is a lot of variety among the acts making this type of show one of the only examples of a variety show left on TV. This is a role that shows like "The Ed Sullivan Show" used to fill. It's fun to watch a magic act followed by a dancing act, followed by a singer.
Because of the massive elimination process, some of these acts are actually quite talented.
One things these shows do a lot of (and which I wish they would do less of) is to emotionalize the stories of the performers. We get little mini biographies of their hardships and family life that is supposed to tug at our heartstrings. Sometimes this works but more often than not it ends up being a lot of emotional fluff that I wish would just go away. "Get to the performances" I say and judge the artists on that!
I also wonder about the fairness of this show. The 'best' artists are saved for last as is the voting. This almost guarantees that the last artist performing will get the highest number of votes as their performance will be the freshest in the viewers memories.
Thanks for your attention and have at least a great couple of hours during the rest of this day.
Peter
Then you allow the top 40 who have made it through to perform and let the viewers vote the number down to 20. Eventually one winner is chosen.
The judges are Piers Morgan, from England, Sharon Osborne, and David Hosselhoff. The show is hosted by Jerry Springer this year (and last).
The judges are kind of a problem as is Jerry Springer. They are sometimes hard to take, especially Jerry and David.
The English version of this show is MUCH better. The judges include Piers and also Amanda Holden who is way sexier and cuter than Sharon, and Simon Cowell who is now probably one of the richest TV personalities on the planet having masterminded American Idol and now these talent shows as well. The hosts in England are two young blokes who are way less obnoxious than Jerry Springer. Also the quality of talent seems much better in England and the show seems to flow smoother than the American show.
For example...the American show took too much time with the auditions and let too many through to the finals. So they had to let about a third of them go all of a sudden, with no further explanation in the beginning of the first Las Vegas Showdown episode.
The American show also let us see too many of the lame acts and too few of the good acts. This means that now that we are at the stage where we are seeing the best of the best, there are many whom we have really never seen before.
Despite all this bitching, the show tends to be very entertaining. There is a lot of variety among the acts making this type of show one of the only examples of a variety show left on TV. This is a role that shows like "The Ed Sullivan Show" used to fill. It's fun to watch a magic act followed by a dancing act, followed by a singer.
Because of the massive elimination process, some of these acts are actually quite talented.
One things these shows do a lot of (and which I wish they would do less of) is to emotionalize the stories of the performers. We get little mini biographies of their hardships and family life that is supposed to tug at our heartstrings. Sometimes this works but more often than not it ends up being a lot of emotional fluff that I wish would just go away. "Get to the performances" I say and judge the artists on that!
I also wonder about the fairness of this show. The 'best' artists are saved for last as is the voting. This almost guarantees that the last artist performing will get the highest number of votes as their performance will be the freshest in the viewers memories.
Thanks for your attention and have at least a great couple of hours during the rest of this day.
Peter
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