One of the most difficult challenges for most aspiring artists (authors, actors and singers) is being discovered and building a fan base. National TV talent contests such as American Idol offer these unknown artists a chance at recognition and to build a fan base by reaching a large audience.
Without these national talent programs, the road to gain recognition is a difficult one, and many talented artists may never be in the right place at the right time to have a shot at the success they dream of.
In fact, it is obvious that the odds of becoming a success in the music industry are about as high as winning a state lottery, which is about 20 million to one. For American Idol contestants, the odds may be better since the program only hold auditions in about six cities, and the number that audition can exceed 10,000 people in each city. Between 1 to 60 people in each city may make it to the Hollywood audition where the top twelve finalists are selected.
Great performance but not the best original song for Jessica.
The sad news is that eventually, American Idol may be cancelled as so many TV shows are when the number of viewers drops too low. In a May 24, 2012 New York Times piece, it was alleged that American Idol’s number of viewers is dropping drastically due to audience fatigue, but I suspect that the drop in viewers may be mostly due to the five white guys playing guitars that won the last five seasons of American Idol.
For example, 29.3 million viewers watched the finale for season 10 but only 21.5 million watched the 2012 finale. American Idol once held the record for most consecutive seasons (ten years) as number one. The largest viewing audience was 37.44 million season 6. Since then, the audience has been shrinking. Between season six and eleven there was a drop of about 57% in viewers.
The real culprit of this decline may be Vote for the Worst.com, which claimed this morning that they had succeeded. “We did it, Worsters! 132 million votes were cast last night, and in the end, we helped the fifth straight white guy with a guitar win American Idol… we succeeded yet again and helped make sure Pinoybot Jessica Sanchez was left in the loser’s circle.”
Jessica singing “I Will Always Love You:
Vote for the Worst.com launched in 2004 with the goal to support contestants on American Idol that the producers would hate to see win (according to the Worsters), and the Alexa stats show that the Worsters’ site has a very high search engine rank of 57,917 (which translates into the top .01% ) internationally and 18,539 in the United States with 693 sites linked in. Based on internet averages, Alexa says this site is visited frequently by females who are college educated in the age range 25-34 with no children.
The goal of any serious Website/Blog is to have a search engine rank in the top one percent. The Worsters have more than achieved that.
The Worsters are wrong about Jessica being a Pinoy, which is a term coined by expatriate Filipino Americans in the 1920s to refer to their immigrant ethnicity. Jessica was born in the United States and her father is an American citizen of Mexican descent that honorably served in the US Navy as did Jessica’s Filipino grandfather. Jessica’s father and grandfather defended the United States and fought for it as I did in 1966 when I was a US Marine serving in Vietnam and less than one percent of Americans serve in the US military to fight its wars as patriots.
Great Song! Best I’ve heard Phillip Phillips sing!
At best, Jessica is a Pinoy-Latino American. Tacking on the term “bot” to “Pinoy” making it “Pinoybot” alleging that she is a Filipino robot or an internal parasite of animals and that is an insult and a racial slur revealing the real character of the individuals behind the “Worsters” movement that supports mediocrity. It is obvious that the “Worsters” are alleged racist Internet Trolls.
However, how long Jessica Sanchez will be left in that so-called American Idol loser’s circle as a “Pinoybot” may not last long as we shall discover in Part 2, and most of those white boys with guitars that the Worster’s claim they helped win may be the real losers as the facts suggest. In addition, Vote for the Worst.com runs ads, which means they are monetized and using their negative spin to attract a gullible audience to turn a profit.
The real danger posed by alleged racist, money mongering Internet Troll sites such as the “Worsters” at Vote for the Worst.com is that if the viewers stop tunning in to watch American Idol and the show is cancelled, the opportunity for tens of thousands of potential music-industry artists will vanish. Then will see a return to the old ways of becoming discovered, which means many will not stand a chance.
Phillip Phillips won season 11, but he was not the most talented singer. In fact, “When asked if he thought he would prevail after Tuesday night’s top two competition show, an incredulous Phillip gave powerhouse runner-up Jessica Sanchez—who some fans might argue was ‘robbed’—total props, answering: ‘No! Did you see Jessica’s last performance?’ Phillips also cited a standout performance by another powerhouse, Joshua Ledet’s ‘It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World,’ as one of his favorites of the entire season.”
Jessica is no “bot” as she sings with Jennifer Holliday
To explain the Worsters’ success, Ruchard Rushfield, the author of ‘American Idol: The Untold Story’ says, “But Idol voters aren’t thinking like record producers, according to Rushfield. “You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as…who’s the nicest guy in a popularity contest,” he says, “And that has led to this dynasty of four, and possibly now five, consecutive, affable, very nice, good-looking white boys.” Source: ABC News
Therefore, viewers that stop watching American Idol because white boys with guitars win supported by the alleged racist Worster Internet Trolls may hurt undiscovered talent. In fact, without American Idol, even Phillip Phillips would not have had a chance to compete and win.
Phillip Phillips singing with John Fogerty – Bad Moon Rising
Although finalists such as Jessica Sanchez, Joshua Ledet and Elise Testone (for example) did not win, these talented individuals may not be losers. A few, as other finalist losers have done, will sign contracts and record singles and/or albums and if they have an audience of fans that love their work, they will succeed. In fact, some finalists have been more successful than winners.
If we compare the winners of the previous four seasons that the Worsters claim to have helped win, we learn who the real winners are.
When we add up the sales numbers of the winners from seasons seven through ten, the sales of albums add up to less than three million in combined sales while one white boy with a guitar, Lee DeWyze of Season 9, sold less than 150,000 albums.
For example, Taylor Hicks, the winner of season 5 in 2006 (two years after the launch of the Worsters’ site), lost the real compeititon in the marketplace to two finalist losers, Chris Daugherty (4th place) and Kellie Pickler (6th place) , and we discover that these two so-called losers have sold more than 8 million albums compared to Hicks, who has sold less than 800,000. It is obvious that even in 2006, the Worsters’ site and its gullible followers (mostly young women and grandmas) were starting to have an impact, which has angered many other viewers that do not belong to this group of Trolls–viewers that have now tuned to other programs.
However, David Archuleta (season 7) and Adam Lambert (season 8) both finalists that lost and signed contracts anyway went on to sell more than a million copies each. In fact, the combined sales of finalists that did not win on American Idol, but signed contracts, total more than 18 million albums sold. If American Idol had not existed, this would not have happened.
In fact, if we compare the numbers of album sold from the winners of the first-four seasons with the last six starting in 2006, we see a dramatic shift. Combined sales of the winners from the first-four seasons add up to about 30 million albums. After season four, as the Worsters gained recognition and support from other false self-esteem driven Trolls, sales dropped through the floor to less than 6 million while the so-called circle of losers that signed contracts sold more than 11 million.
Phillip Phillips singing with John Fogerty – Have You Ever Seen
Therefore, every time a fan of American Idol stops watching the show because a less talented white boy with a guitar wins, those viewers are only helping alleged racist Internet Trolls–driven by a false sense of self-esteem and entitlement–known as the Worsters to ruin it for everyone even future white boys with guitars.
To discover the real winners that compete on American Idol, we have to wait and see how many albums these artists that landed in the so-called losers’ circle sell to their fans.
I suspect that these Worsters are examples of young adults that were raised by parents that pushed a false sense of self-esteem on their children, and these bitter, entitled, narcissistic adult children cannot stand competitions where talent and merit count more than just dreams and mediocrity. Instead, the Worsters hate the real world where merit is the only way most people really succeed.
Worsters were raised to believe that all one had to do was dream of fame and it would arrive without effort until, as adults, reality taught them the truth and now they are jealous and want to ruin it for artists that are willing to work hard and risk failure to have a chance at success.
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This is an update added a few hours later:
Anthony McCartney of Associated Press reports, “Wednesday night’s runner-up, 16-year-old Jessica Sanchez, doesn’t have a definite shot at producing an album and could be paid as little as $30,000 in advances for recording singles, according to the “Idol” contract she and other Season 11 contestants signed earlier this year…
“…(Jessica) Sanchez will rake in $50,000 for her appearances. Both are also set to get a cut of merchandise profits.
“No matter what recording deal Sanchez is offered, she already has heavyweight Hollywood representation. In March, a judge approved a deal in which she will be represented by Creative Artists Agency for future television, personal appearance and other employment deals.”
Source: http://music.yahoo.com/news/idol-moves-toward-lower-payouts-runners-165310140.html
A note to the Worsters: The only thing that Jessica didn’t win was 1st place on American Idol. She still has a shot to win with singles and possibly an album. The rest is up to her fan base.
Released on YouTube on May 2, 2010 – this young woman is no “bot”
In fact, Spin Movie Records said, “The producers discovered her on YouTube, where her channel has amassed more than 22,000,000 video views,” and back in 2009, she sang the national anthem when the Chargers hosted the Miami Dolphins before a sell-out crowd of 73,000.”
Source: http://www.spinmoverecords.com/artists/jessica-sanchez/
Note: When she became a finalist on American Idol, Jessica “either deleted or made all of her YouTube videos private”
You Tube Stars listed Jessica Sanchez as number 10 — one of the top female singers on YouTube with the most downloads. This is how a true artist builds a fan base, and one of those fans wrote this post. He didn’t know she existed until he saw her on YouTube competing on American Idol.
Source: http://mywebs.hubpages.com/hub/YouTube-Stars-10-Female-Singers-You-Never-Have-Heard-Of#mod_7189703
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Note: David Della Terza is listed as the site creater for “Vote for the Worst.com”.
The Baltimore Sun says (Dave) Della Terza was 22 (age not maturity) in 2005, and reports that he and a “group of his buddies took matters into their own hands. They created their online campaign, votefortheworst.com, to throw the competition off course. (American Idol votes are supposed to be cast in favor of contestants who fans want to keep each Tuesday. Fans can call or text message as many times as they want in a two-hour period.)”
Terza on Letterman
It seems that Terza lives or lived in Santa Clarita, a suburb of Los Angeles. According to Wiki, Terza limits his media appearances and prefers to let his website do its own talking. However, it is Terza or one of his buddies that does the posting.
Source: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-05-03/features/0505030068_1_american-idol-voting-fans
Note: It would be interesting to discover if Terza’s parents focused on inflating his sense of false self-esteem when he was a child. Is Terza famous or infamous?
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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.
His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
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Filed under: American Dream, American Idol, Lloyd Lofthouse Tagged: American Idol, American Idol 11th season, Dave Della Terza, false self-esteem gone wrong, Filipino American, Jessica, Jessica Sanchez, narcissism, narcissistic, Phillip, Phillip Phillips, Pinoy, Vote for the Worst, Vote for the Worst.com, Worster
