It’s best if you don’t read this article if you are a fan of Indian Idol. But, then again, maybe you should because “Idol” is very much a global phenomenon. TV around the world is becoming increasingly homogenised, with formats for programmes being “borrowed” from one country and used in another, usually modified to attract the maximum number of viewers and the greatest amount of advertising revenue.

In 2007, I was in Nepal when the climax to Indian Idol was being aired. Of course, there were huge celebrations in Kathmandu when the winner was announced. Good luck to the winners of “Idol,” from whichever country they come from and whichever version they enter. The winners undoubtedly have a certain degree of talent and ability; but, exactly how much, remains open to debate.

I recently heard the 65-year-old hard rock solo singer and former frontman of ‘Black Sabbath’, Ronnie James Dio, slighting American Idol by referring to it as ‘American Karaoke’: people who have a half decent voice or who can’t sing at all come along and attempt to sing songs that were written by other people and made famous by other people.

He was intimating that the process has less to do with developing talent and is more about having “star quality,” which these days seems synonymous with being good looking enough for advertisers to want to latch onto you in order to push their products.

Star quality: ripe for positioning, branding and mass commodification; ripe for becoming cross-branded with some pimple cream, fizzy drink or designer label clothes.

In the UK, TV is awash with these types of shows: Pop Idol, Popstars, the X Factor and Fame Academy. Whatever happened to putting in your apprenticeship, developing your skills and then trying to make it? Now it’s a case of almost instant fame after having come through some preliminary rounds, with a bunch of millionaire judges telling you that you are good enough to be a star, to be positioned in the marketplace. Mr Dio asked, just how many of these winning competitors will be remembered in 50 years time, and how many will truly appreciate easy fame?
Well, let me answer that question in this way. Their longevity will mimic that of the consumer products that they resemble: the consumer is led to believe that if you do not possess the latest products on offer then you are a failure, but, if you do possess them, you will feel an even bigger failure because by that stage you will have bought into the lie and will be wanting the bigger, brighter, better versions of the older products that were supposed to be the biggest, brightest and best that could ever exist.

Easy come, easy go
Six months ago you ran out to buy the latest miracle product to hit the shelves. Now you are told that that particular cutting edge commodity is obsolete and useless when compared to the super-improved-edge version. For modern consumerism, read modern fame. The fickle hand of the market will write the fate of many of the winners of these types of shows. Easy come, easy go.

Acts like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young wrote their own music, paid their dues through years of touring or working as session musicians and are still very much around some 40 years later. Sure, these acts were eventually marketed and promoted but not before they had worked hard at refining their craft, toiling away as session musicians or in small clubs in less than glamourous surroundings.

I’m simply out of touch some may say because the programmes in question are a case of “the public gets what the public wants.” The trouble is that in this day and age, through increasingly sophisticated advertising and marketing mechanisms, mass public trends and opinions are all too easily formed and discarded in favour of the next one, like “stardom” itself.

Rock and roll is in the blood of Ronnie James Dio— it has to be, given that he is still belting it out in his mid-sixties. To some, Mr Dio may not be particularly cute to look at or “user friendly” and his image might not readily attract advertisers in their droves. But he is, and probably always was, in it for the music and perhaps not so much the fame. How many competitors in these instant fame shows can truly say that with hand on heart as they clamour over one another in their desperate and often futile attempts to achieve overnight fame on the back of little or no talent at all?  

Fame for fame’s sake and money for God’s sake? I sometimes think so.

As the multi-talented, long enduring Bob Dylan once said: the times they are a changing.