> > We've had more than our fair share of these. Pop Idol, Pop Stars, Pop Stars: The Rivals, Pop Stars: The Rivals Extra, the horrendously ill-fated Fame Academy (which had the biggest prize ever given out to anyone, and the lowest audience figures) and probably more I forgot about. The entire country is sick of them now, I hope, but I know secretly that the general public is still oblivious to their sheer badness and is probably clammering for more.

It is with considerable shame that I must own up to New Zealand being the original source of the Pop Stars formula. I think Australia took up the idea first, after Pop Stars screened here (resulting in the creation and almost immediate demise of the girl group True Bliss). Then the concept was sold to the UK and now it's rearing its ugly head in the USA as American Idol.

The original Pop Stars show in New Zealand was pretty repulsive, but it didn't involve the more nasty aspects which Sam talks about in his description of American Idol. Large numbers of girls in their teens and 20s were shown at singing and dancing auditions, but they were not told to their faces whether they sucked or not. After the decisions had been made in each round, there were various interviews with failed candidates after they had got the form letter or whatever it was. I could be wrong, but I believe it *was* just an outright "We regret to inform you" rejection slip or phone call, which did not go into details of why the contestant was unsuccessful. The resulting weepfests were a result of not getting in, and from whatever personal hopes and fantasies had rested on that. Not because some judge told them live on national TV that they were ugly as mud and sang like a herd of donkeys being chainsawed. (Even though many of them were and did.)

The audition process was about half the show's run, and the rest followed the successful contestants being formed into a commercial pop group. It was a very popular show, and while it didn't appeal to me at all, I don't think there was anything wrong with it as entertainment. After the format became successful overseas, damn near every overseas version screened here as well, usually with promotional blurbs such as "Bangladesh's version of our very own Pop Stars!" in the hopes of appealing to national pride or something. I don't know if we'll get American Idol eventually. I think we can probably live without it.