(antiMusic) Former American Idol contestant and top selling artist of 2007, Chris Daughtry is in a bit of a whirlwind of controversy following a Rolling Stone article where he is quoted as saying that American Idol is in decline. [The drop in ratings back him up] Daughtry took to his website following the publishing of the article and tried to clarify his remarks saying that they were taken out of context. While we published part of his statement yesterday where he claimed they left out all of the good things he said about the television karaoke contest that made him a star, RS went on the offensive and posted the entire transcript and a recording of the interview. While we didn't find too many "good things" he had to say about the show, we can't argue with the negative things either. Perhaps he was referring to the following comments as the good ones? "It just gave me the opportunity to show people who I was. And that's not saying that in a cocky way, but all I'm saying is I was an artist before I went on the show."
As for the whole taken out of context claim, that happens anytime you lift quotes from an interview. While the RS interview did contain all of the quotes attributed to him, it did leave a lot of the conversation out; thus the context of the quotes. We're not taking RS to task for this since it is a standard practice, which you have to do if you post "articles" instead of interview transcripts. When you craft an article you make your arguments and pick the quotes to back it up. We do it too. (Although we do publish full transcripts of almost all interviews). Now here is an "extreme" example of how this works, we are going to use part of Andy Greene's finished article and the interview transcript to craft our own article.
Rolling Stone magazine predicted that amid the Hollywood writers strike that American Idol would see a "ratings bump" this year. However, the lack of new programs on competing networks didn't give the show the predicted bump when it premiered on Tuesday night. In fact, the season opener lost 4 million viewers from the 2007 season premiere.
The decline in viewership reflects the overall decline in interest for the "Idol" franchise with former winners and contestants making headlines recently when they were dropped from their record deals due to poor sales.
"They just need to like rethink it a bit," says Rolling Stone writer Andy Greene. "I watched last season, and like they all sucked. It was boring, you know?" We know and have known for a long time. - Now go and read the full transcripts and make up your own mind.
