Grateful Guarini, who still has ties to the Idol machine with a commentary show on the TV Guide Network, is in the minority. There's malaise in the audience. Things aren't quite right.
"With the star power, it's just not as much of a contest," said Chuck Haas, an Idol addict from Havertown. "The show got a little flashy this year, and it was overkill. It didn't stay focused on the contestants and their individual talents. It lost the appeal of the girl or boy next door."
"Fox has been outfoxed," said Janet Poore, a marketing executive from Plymouth Meeting, who checks in with TV's most popular show to stay abreast of the consumer culture, and who cited a different deficiency in Season 6.
"They turned it into such a freak show at the beginning. The auditions set the tone for the whole year. They were a lot meaner, and that, in turn, gave life to outside efforts by people like Howard Stern to basically destroy the show."
The ratings, which were down 10 to 15 percent during the hair-raising reign of Sanjaya Malakar ("He never should have been a finalist," Poore said), bounced back with last week's results show, when two of the last three remaining men in this year's ragged crop got the hook.
"We're headed for a big finish," said media maven Stacey Schulman, chief executive officer of Hi: Human Interaction, a consulting firm. "There are four good ones left, and we're still going to have our 'Ohmigod, how-can-we-ever-choose?' moment, but the show this year has been somewhat contrary to its essence as America's contest."
