Of course, this is after I deleted my explanation. I knew I should have cut and saved it instead. *g*
The show's got something like 5 rounds. The first round is the initial auditions in the various cities. This is what you saw tonight, and will be for the rest of the week probably. IMO, the point of televising this round is for laughs. They want to show the bad people in the most humiliating light possible. Which is pretty awful, but I admit that last year, I was loving it. Laughing my ass off. Today, not so much. The contestants sing a capella.
The second round is "Hollywood". If I remember correctly, they line them up in groups of like 15 and make them sing again. Then they eliminate people, leaving some number that I don't remember (48 maybe?) A capella again.
The third round, I remember them having the contestants sing in groups of 3, where they actually had to do a group sing. There may have been more to this round, but I can't remember for sure. From this group, the judges pick 32 people. Contestants get some canned music for this round to sing with.
The fourth round is where the judges lose most of their power. From now on, they become critics and don't actually get to affect much directly. They put the 32 into groups of 8 and have them perform, 1one group per night. The audience votes and the top 2 from each group go on to the next round. Then the judges pick some number of non-winning people from this current round (last year they cheated by bringing back a few people who didn't even make it into the top 32) for the wildcard show. My understanding is that in AI1, the judges picked one contestant from the group to go on, and the audience picked another, making 10. In AI2, they let each judge pick one and the audience pick a fourth, making it a top 12. Contestants sing with just a piano accompianist in this round.
The fifth and last round is where they do the big stage thing. This is the "main" part of the competition. From here on in, each contestant sings once a week, and after the audience votes, the person with the least number of votes is eliminated.
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timeasmymeasure
American Idol format
Date: 2004-01-19 07:58 pm (UTC)The show's got something like 5 rounds. The first round is the initial auditions in the various cities. This is what you saw tonight, and will be for the rest of the week probably. IMO, the point of televising this round is for laughs. They want to show the bad people in the most humiliating light possible. Which is pretty awful, but I admit that last year, I was loving it. Laughing my ass off. Today, not so much. The contestants sing a capella.
The second round is "Hollywood". If I remember correctly, they line them up in groups of like 15 and make them sing again. Then they eliminate people, leaving some number that I don't remember (48 maybe?) A capella again.
The third round, I remember them having the contestants sing in groups of 3, where they actually had to do a group sing. There may have been more to this round, but I can't remember for sure. From this group, the judges pick 32 people. Contestants get some canned music for this round to sing with.
The fourth round is where the judges lose most of their power. From now on, they become critics and don't actually get to affect much directly. They put the 32 into groups of 8 and have them perform, 1one group per night. The audience votes and the top 2 from each group go on to the next round. Then the judges pick some number of non-winning people from this current round (last year they cheated by bringing back a few people who didn't even make it into the top 32) for the wildcard show. My understanding is that in AI1, the judges picked one contestant from the group to go on, and the audience picked another, making 10. In AI2, they let each judge pick one and the audience pick a fourth, making it a top 12. Contestants sing with just a piano accompianist in this round.
The fifth and last round is where they do the big stage thing. This is the "main" part of the competition. From here on in, each contestant sings once a week, and after the audience votes, the person with the least number of votes is eliminated.