Why American Idol is like the Hunger Games

During the audition episodes for season 9 of American Idol there was a contestant named Justin Williams. His audition was shown, he got four yeses and than failing at Hollywood week. The previous season he was shown for about 1/2 of a second during the audition episodes, he was shown doing a very successful group day performance (The Jackson 5 Song) with Kris Allen's group and than didn't make it past Hollywood week. I could be wrong but I don't think Season 9 even mentioned him being a contestant from the previous season. The reason he was shown more prominently during season 9 is that he shared his story of surviving cancer.

In The Hunger Games, Peeta is introducing himself to the audience and more importantly sponsors, when he's giving his speech he's telling people about himself and he tells everyone that he is in love with his co-nominee, Katniss. The reason that Peeta does this is that people, especially sponsors, want the games to be interesting. He figures that if tells everyone that he is in love the sponsors will want to keep him in the game and will send him food and weapons.

What I didn't like about American Idol last season is that by the time they got to the top 13 the majority of the contestant had only performed once. I remember that for many weeks whenever Mat Giraud or Kris Allen sung I would think, "wait, who's this guy again." I knew who Adam, Danny, and Lil were because they had already received a lot of attention. However with Adam, his singing was his only back-story at this point, Danny and Lil could both gain sympathy point because Danny had his deceased wife and his friend, Lil had her struggling family.

A lot of fans think it's lame that all they show during the beginning are sappy emotional stories but it's kind of understandable. There is a website called dialidol that predicts American idol by dialing for all contestants and keeping track of how many busy signals they get. For the recent episodes of the top 24 Katie and Andrew scored very high, two other contestants, Casey and Crystal were both second place but much lower, all of the other contestants scored 0 points but dialidol was still able to rank them in descending order. The point I'm getting at is that there needs to be something that people vote on when the music isn't that great, the counter argument is that if Idol showed all of the top 24's auditions as well as well as more hollywood singing instead of drama the show would be more effective in helping the audience get to know the contestants.

This is off topic but it relates to American Idol. Some people think that it's actually better to take 2nd place than to become the winner. The reason is that if you're not under the winner's contract you have more liberty in your music and you can make more money. I think it would be funny if during the audition episodes people said things like, "MY BROTHER'S THE NEXT RUNNER UP FOR AMERICAN IDOL!" or "Who... will be the next runner up."