Undermining reality

A bit genius this: a website called Vote for the Worst is threatening to totally derail American Idol. We say: yay!

Long quote a coming, and the full thing's here:
Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - TV & radio: American Idol falls victim to bloggers

If, like me, you have watched askance and then aghast as first Pop Idol in the UK and then American Idol in the US turned our charts into a hellish, pap-driven kindergarten, then here's some good news. The whole sorry, cynical edifice may soon come crumbling down around Simon Cowell's ears (along with, I might add, the very lucrative premium phone services that support it).

Once again, TV has become the victim of the internet, this time in the form of some very smart American bloggers who run the site called Vote for the Worst. Like all great and truly subversive ideas, Vote for the Worst is deliciously simple. Using the show's own strength - the public phone vote that has proved so reliable in propelling bland, semi-talented teens into the charts - against it, ju-jitsu style, Vote for the Worst urges you to do exactly that. Those acts who offend even Cowell's limited aesthetic sensibilities are being driven past the judges and toward victory by a carefully marshalled online campaign, the stated aim of which is to improve the viewer experience: lousy singers, after all, make for better, funnier TV. I say stated aim, because the real purpose of the site is permanently to remove Cowell and company from the American airwaves.

Oh but I sense a summer of fun coming...