After a lot of buildup on social media and following some glitzy, well-placed TV commercials, the American Song Contest finally premiered on Monday evening.
Given the obvious investment, producers and network execs were hoping the new show, based on the much-loved Eurovision Song Contest, would catch fire with the American public. Viewing figures released on Tuesday make one thing clear: there is a lot of work to be done.
?? The public has three days to choose which three acts to put through from Heat 1 of the #AmericanSongContest
— wiwibloggs (@wiwibloggs) March 22, 2022
? But the jury has already made their choice: Hueston from Rhode Island.
? He’s said to have the voice of a “mystic Viking”.
pic.twitter.com/gbx92TwDq3
Ratings published by Showbuzz Daily show that American Song Contest premiered at a lukewarm 0.49 rating, with 2.9 million total viewers, in its 8 p.m. Eastern time slot. This placed it #4 of the five main broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CW).
In every sales demographic and demographic share category, ASC also finished #4 to its competition. It was up against new episodes of ABC’s American Idol and FOX’s drama 911, and reruns of the CBS comedy The Neighborhood and the CW’s All American.
When you take into account all broadcast network shows, ASC finished a disappointing 9th out of 12 — only beating its follow-up show on NBC, Endgame, and the CW shows All American and All American: Homecoming.
"New Boot Goofin'" by Wyoming's Ryan Charles is a WHOLE VIBE. ?
— NBC Entertainment (@nbc) March 22, 2022
NBC’s #AmericanSongContest is LIVE Mondays 8/7c. pic.twitter.com/kUvsSwvLyb
American Song Contest: Mixed reviews from critics
The reactions have come thick and fast…and they aren’t always glowing.
Reacting to the premiere episode, Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast commented that it was a “big ole meh,” while pointing out the performances of Oklahoma’s AleXa and Puerto Rico’s Christian Pagán as the highlights of the night.
Fallon added that while Wyoming’s entry “New Boot Goofin'” was “undeniably the worst song of the night,” he predicted that its irresistibility would become the show’s “greatest success story.”
Emily Yahr of The Washington Post also sang the praises of “New Boot Goofin'”, adding that it “immediately stole the show’s social media thunder” and it could be “the song of the summer.”
Yahoo! Music‘s editor-in-chief Lyndsey Parker wrote that the first episode of the American Song Contest “failed to live up to Eurovision’s wacky promise or premise,” while predicting Rhode Island’s entry “Held on Too Long” could win the competition.
As we previously reported, Swedish producer Christer Björkman has said it will take a few editions of the show to really get it going.
Last autumn, he told Swedish media that he doesn’t expect the show to be a huge hit overnight.
“I am clear that this must be a long-term investment — no one can expect the format to be an immediate success. But I believe in a catch-up effect after three or four seasons.”
Writing on Twitter, a user named @jypetwiiice suggested that producers should do more to promote the songs before the contest. Rather than adopting this Melodifestivalen-style approach of dropping the songs in full during the show, he’d prefer some proper teasing.
“Tbh it’s because of the lack of excitement and build up,” he said in response to our Tweet about the ratings. “They could have released the songs before March and interacted with the fans more.”
Tbh it’s because of the lack of excitement and build up. They could have released the songs before March and interacted with the fans more https://t.co/48UWKgfJ8Q
— Kyler ?????? (@JYPETWIlICE) March 23, 2022
Another user, @enkidruga, agrees.
“It should have aimed for a shorter block with less commercials. Songs should have been announced and released ahead of time. There was minimal marketing leading up to the 1st qualifier broadcast, you could easily forget this was supposed to be on TV.”
It should have aimed for a shorter block with less commercials. Songs should have been announced and released ahead of time. There was minimal marketing leading up to the 1st qualifier broadcast, you could easily forget this was supposed to be on TV. https://t.co/4xE245buln
— elisa / ???? (permissibly feral) ?? (@enkidurga) March 23, 2022
What did you love about the show? What tips and advice do you have for producers? Let us know down below…
This has got to be the most mis-judged event of all time! The huge difference between the
tallys of the judges and popular vote indicate this whole competition was totally off-base,!!!!
It’s not fun unless its against other countries.
America vs America just isn’t exciting for Americans.
You need to get the whole of North & South America involved… and then its like a world-cup type of fun competition.
Hopefully in the future, it will be a world-vision song contest, with all 200 countries taking part 😉
Then its will be so much fun for everyone in the world 🙂
You’re never going to match the excitement and build of Eurovision with commercials and without prereleasing the songs. The actual Eurovision broadcasts are FAST (and there are only two) and the songs are released MONTHS in advance with major fanbases already existing by the time finals comes around. They borrowed barely the name from Eurovision and it shows.
I’m looking at a really good performance, but the production sucks so bad: scene flipping fast, pull outs, constant motion, eyes can never fix on the screen, its so distracting and nauseating visually you can’t even begin to appreciate anything much less the song. And the set and stage production is awesome. But you can’t see it to appreciate it. seriously now. That’s PATHETIC! fire the producers controlling the video feed. aweful. still pissed off about it.
Also ratings for ESC are dropping year after year. Wiwi, be honest!
I’m not sure if that’s true but definitely the rating this year will suffer a lot because of no participation from Russia.
You need at least on song that becomes a hit or that you really root for to make the contest exciting. I think the songs was the lacking part.
I disagree with the Tweet by @jypetwiiice that they should have released the songs earlier. If they did that, the ratings would be even worse. There would be literally no reason to watch, and it would just be a web contest and not a TV show. However, the show did need better promotion, particularly online because the younger gen don’t watch commercials on TV for enough people to know about the program to tune in. I also think the artists should be given clear directions that they need to post about their involvement in the competition a specified X amount… Read more »
Watched in New York here. NBC is really good at messing up: just like ruining the Olympics, the sheer amount of commercials made this train wreck unwatchable. Also the hosts had ZERO chemistry.
I thought the choice of Snoop and Clarkson was a horrible choice. Snoop would be fine if he was one of 3, but not as one of just 2.
Most of the artists aren’t rappers and Snoop doesn’t bring anything to the table when it comes to commentary or judging related to singing.
They should have brought in a contemporary R&B singer and a veteran Rock musician to join Clarkson instead.
So many things that doesn’t go well. First, the lack of promotion. How can you expect people to be excited for your show meanwhile promoting a 30sec snippet on Tiktok??! The lack of a big show! They dare to compare that to Eurovision when it’s literally a National Selection (Melodifestivalen brother).. The small stage, the number of heats and semi-finals, promoting the artists more than the state/territory, the votes on Tiktok.. It clearly miss that Eurovision vibe where you know you watch a competition between countries and not an artist singing competition like The Voice or American Idol. This is… Read more »
Relax. It’s only been one episode. And it never was aiming to be like Eurovision (especially when ESC itself went from an 8-country show gala to a 3-night multi-hour event involving scores of countries).
yes, it’s 8pm on a broadcast TV channel. i have no idea what you’d expect from that beyond it being “family-friendly” – 99% of eurovision is too.
“A few editions” he says? He has this year and the next to make this show a hit. Simon Cowell failed with X-Factor in the U.S. in 2011-13. With that failure still on the minds of many, and Idol winding down (I’d say this time for good), I’d say Björkman is less likely to get a 3rd season if this season is not so well-received and the next season is perceived to have laid an egg compared to this one.
Maybe it’s just me but I think the purpose of the show far outweights profits. They will probably continue the show despite the poor ratings—hire less famous hosts, smaller stage, less lucrative timeslots, etc.
The stage they already have is small though (as in it’s not an arena, but more of a soundstage), and it’s also the one used for their version of The Voice. I think they’ll more than likely gonna keep it.
NBC is a business, not a charity. The Eurovision has a non-profit and government element to it, NBC doesn’t. If the network was PBS then your comment would make more sense.
NBC has ‘opportunity cost’ to worry about. Meaning that if they aired something else in its place, it would either make more money or would cost less and have better margins.
Make it closer to Eurovision and get rid of the commercials. It’s a disaster. And the fact that we need to wait days for the results… It’s a mess.
can’t get rid of ads, it’s a commercial tv network. someone has to pay for all the pyrotechnics. you wait for days because america has territories that are significantly past the time zone it originally airs in. these are two things you won’t see fixed, so take a deep breath 🙂
Well then it’s over… It was bad for her.
It’s about ad revenue, not the contest. Whoever wins, we will never see them again.
At least they aren’t going to enter into ESC after the X-factor clone flopped.
Never say never.
As of right now it does not look like there will be another edition of American Song Contest.
Agreed. The producers were just catering to the Americans’ low attention span and need for glitz and glamour. The US will never appreciate the unity that the ESC is meant to show. As an American, my county is radicalized and polarized on each side at the moment. The only good thing is that the radicals on each side are somewhat limited and the minority, but they unfortunately get the most media attention. They are basically a cult, which is why Trump cannot win again.
what does this have to to with ASC? and how is america more polarized than any other place? judging that there will not be another season of ASC after one episode is harsh as things can go different ways over the next weeks. plus, ESC shows as much unity as it shows disunity – juries were reintroduced because of a _perception_ in the “west” that the eastern “new arrivals” vote too much for eastern countries, so they wanted to moderate this (and this wasn’t quite true at all since all that happened was that countries in the east started winning… Read more »
Are you American? Do you live here? Just go ahead an google “gazpacho police” = American politics right now. That is the correct phrase also; I am talking about the soup. An American politician does not know what the “gestapo” were. Just stupid. Another song contest is not about anything but money in the US.
I loved it
This is simply a Talent show, like The Voice or American Idol. The sob stories, the hosts, 10 weeks etc. They are constantly using the terms “episode” and ” first season”, which just futhermore proves the audience, critics and even producers themselves view this as a reality/telent show.
A “season” or in it’s British equivalent “series”, is more of a technical term to describe a show’s single run as commissioned by its broadcaster, with varying lengths. it’s no different with MGP and Melodifestivalen’s 6-week run, or Pabandom is Naujo’s historically epic 8-weeks. Packages in between songs where acts are being interviewed to introduce themselves to the audience is no different to how acts in national selections are sometimes being introduced because they are selling themselves to a national audience (all the while allowing time to prepare the stage for the next act). In fact, there’s really not a… Read more »
it’s the same like melodifestivalen – is this a reality show too?
“I am clear that this must be a long-term investment — no one can expect the format to be an immediate success. But I believe in a catch-up effect after three or four seasons.”
The usually astute Christer Bjorkman completely failing to understand how US network television works with those comment. While a niche cable channel or a streamer might, there’s no way NBC are going to give this three seasons to try and find its feet.
it’s off to a pretty dire start. Fourth behind 20 year old American Idol and repeats of mediocre CBS sitcoms is not good.
I am not sure where people are getting their information like “NBC is always #4” or “NBC is only available on cable” or “NBC is only in big cities”…the facts are that last season among the key demos the tv industry cares about—NBC was the #1 network, it had the #1 show (Sunday Night Football) and the #1 drama (This is Us). NBC is available in 100% of the country. And you do not need to subscribe to cable or pay for NBC in any way—it is free and available to anyone who owns a TV. Additionally NBC promoted ASC… Read more »
Finding a hit new show these days is like finding lightning in the bottle. Linear TV, at least in America, has seen ratings decline across the board in the past two decades as cable and streaming began eating into the ratings pie once dominated by broadcast networks in addition to people watching on delay. And that’s when you take football out of the equation and focus on scripted and unscripted. Figures as much as 10 million viewers and above used to be e considered a threshold of a hit show if you were watching TV in 2011, anything below is… Read more »
Spot-on! I’ve been watching the ratings for the last 15 years, and I see the same thing.
agreed the ratings weren’t great but 2.9MM is compared to Am. Idol’s 5.2MM so it’s not impossible for this to change when more buzz builds. Also, let’s see the adjusted ratings that include viewing on various platforms past the premiere. It is a brand new show and a wholly new concept.
Usually the shows start with a strong rating and the numbers drop with every episode. The only time that’s different is if a show suddenly blows up in awareness, then the second or third season will have stronger numbers then the first season. But in terms of this season itself, it’s not looking good.
As far as I know, NBC has almost always been the 4th weakest network, so putting the ASC on it was guaranteed to make it do worse. However, other than Alexa, who already had an established fanbase, no song has more than 15,000 Spotify streams or 40,000 YouTube views. That’s more telling than the ratings, no one actually cares about the songs.
In the 20th century NBC used to fight for first with CBS
???? NBC is the biggest network in the country what are you talking about
well the worst part is that NBC isn’t even available in smaller markets, only big cities and cable TV, I can watch ESC live every year online with no signup or anything, but I can’t watch ASC until 24 hours later, and how do I vote again? TikTok or the NBC app? the producers are not making it easy (not even trying)
where did you get this information? NBC is available everywhere. if you’re in the US, you can watch NBC on their app…
I watched this horrible thing. There are several things some people have already mentioned. Audience don’t know neither the singer nor the songs. You can not compare this with American Idol or similar contests since in those, the contestants perform COVERS that the audience love. Who would watch a show with nobodies and unknown songs wich by the way were terrible. Even Michael Bolton’s song was full of clichés. To save this, songs must be released and promoted before the show. Yes the guy from Rhode Island was good but not remarkable. This reminds me more of those loooooong National… Read more »
then eurovision is not for you, because it’s new songs sung mostly by relatively unknown artists.
Just for context, how were the ratings for ESC in 1956? The broadcast landscape in the US is totally different than Europe. American Song Contest can’t be ESC, and it never will be. ASC is a weak little baby right now. It’s going to poop a lot, fall down a lot, make weird noises, and it can’t even focus its eyes yet. It just came out of the womb three days ago, for Pete’s sake. If it fails, it fails. No harm done. If it succeeds, it will be because it evolves into something that people here can respond to.… Read more »
I love this! Weak little baby making weird noises indeed!
That’s ok but in this case don’t use our name, our popularity ’cause as you said it would never be the same. There is not even one percent of Eurovision in this competition. First of all, there is no Eurovision soul in this USA Song Contest.
Using Eurovision’s popularity? In the US? They’d have to explain to everyone what it is first.
lol, asc commisioned the format, not the soul.
I mean, 2.9 million viewers ain’t bad…and a lot of people don’t trust NBC these days anyway and have stopped watching the channel ENTIRELY for other types of content they’ve put on there recently…
I’m going to try to listen to every song. There will be one gem in there at least, I hope.
it’s much better than the final of melodifestivalen this year if you take out the winner (‘hold me closer’ is really outstanding). people like to hate.
God I hope this format doesn’t work. Eurovision has commercialised enough without this urging it further along the lines. Could we just have a more authentic Eurovision and less focus on franchising please?
what would a more authentic eurovision be after 65 years?
They put this thing on a monday night slot, only short teasers were released in advance, the rules and concept were poorly explained, used the Superbowl to announce the hosts despite the venn diagram of people who like sports and people who like Eurovision having a pretty small overlap, and I – an American living in Massachusetts – wouldn’t even have known it was happening except that I follow wiwibloggs. Then they talk about poor ratings. Yeah, ok.
spot on
what’s a better time slot for you?
Probably a Friday or Sunday could be a better time. Or if it didn’t go head-to-head against other singing/talent shows on other networks.
Lol, as expected : FLOP
Just do a contest in the whole American continent
It just wasn’t advertised enough and when it was advertised it wasn’t explained what it is, people thought it would be just another talent show. Eurovision is a unique contest, the only one where an artist represents a whole country. Also, Eurovision entries are chosen either through a national final, or through a national broadcaster and the next contest is held in the winning country, so of course more people will watch it, to see how their country ends up. Also, the staging was chaotic, too many people. In my opinion, ASC needs to change the format completely and either… Read more »
the songs were picked by the producers instead of having each state submit their own songs…what works best about Eurovision is each country choosing a song and getting behind a song and entering this competition…this just felt like a regular music reality show…the network should’ve relied on their local TV stations to pick a song from locally aired shows…I also think NBC was the complete wrong network to air something like this
yup
It would require a tremendously huge endeavor to have each state and territory do their own song for ASC in the way that it is done in Eurovision. Or a least, that just cannot be done on the show’s first year. And the songs were not necessarily producer-picked, o a least what I’m assuming you believe is that the acts were given the songs they performed in. It was an open submissions call that lasted throughout the past summer which required songwriters, producers, record labels, and singers themselves to put themselves forward for consideration. ASC got on board the producers… Read more »
totally agreed. it’s kind of ridiculous what people expect. this can absolutely find a life, just needs a bit of time for the buzz to build… the article’s title also isn’t helping since it doesn’t take into account the complexities of starting a new show. even the voice (started at a different time) rose over time.
I agree that this is a big problem. Ultimately you have one team of producers choosing all the entries and therefore the show is susceptible to their preferences / biases. I think one of the greatest assets of ESC is that show producers have no say in entries and very little say in stagings. This leads to a very diverse show, with lot of entries being outside comfort zone of any TV producer. At the same time, I understand why they weren’t able to replicate this in the first year. It can be improved in the future as ASC gains… Read more »
1) the local stations? how would this work? how much would it cost? you know NBC doesn’t own these stations, they’re affiliates…
2) what would be a better network than NBC?
i’m not surprised katy perry’s american idol beat it three fold
barely 2-fold, let’s not exaggerate. 2.9 vs 5.2 million viewers.
Let’s pretend we are all surprised
I found it a bit boring. The spirit is not there yet, but it has potential. Maybe needs some time. But there were some pretty good songs though.
JYP :))))))))))))))))))))))))
Viewing numbers usually don’t include people who are watching it online, and that’s an increasingly bigger number of young people today. It especially doesn’t include people watching from abroad online. Also, not many shows have breathtaking numbers from the very first episode. It takes patience and time. Americans are onto something. It’s important to stay open to suggestions, and mold your own show step by step.
I haven’t watched live TV in years. Who has time for 2 hours bloated with ad breaks on a Monday night, I have work in the morning. If I’m super excited about it, I might check live tweets and watch highlights on YouTube the next day.
how do you watch this online? which streaming service? if you are in a small market there is no NBC streaming on any service
The first episode is on Peacock now, they are releasing them 1 day after the live NBC airing. There are other services too, I forget but it’s easily googled. The performance videos are on YouTube on the NBC official YouTube channel. The NBC app sucks, their website is a bit better.
Christer Björkman is a producer, so what is to expect than some kind of Melodifestivalen
I would love for something like Liza Vassilieva’s MGP 2020 song to represent Florida.
Would the producers even be allowed to have a song like that?
That song wasn’t very high on my MGP list, but it doesn’t matter. The very presence of that message is very much needed for Florida right now. As I said before with unconventionally looking performers being half-naked on stage, I don’t think there’s a rule on that. However, it wouldn’t be a safe bet to do well with the wider audiences, and we know what many producers think about taking that risk.
Yeah, I didn’t really like Liza’s song either. Still, it would be worth it. Something like Big Daddy Karsten would be even better, maybe, but I just like that she says the word that Florida says is not allowed.
100% yes.
LMAO yes
Given The Daily Beast’s description of Eurovision itself, I assume that first ASC show must have been pretty good.
Hey Y’all! American here. Over the past decade, young millennials and Gen-Z have been raised without cable tv. It’s usually Gen-x and Boomers who have TV and cable these days. Plus, the 2.9 million viewers do not include the people who pre-recorded the show, those in the West Coast, or who streamed it online (like I did).
Also, 2.9 million viewers ain’t too bad for a debut program post-pandemic. Not great, but not bad. In order for ASC to be cancelled would be if under a million viewers tuned in, which isn’t the case here ?
nice excuses for a program that came 4th and had lower ratings than reruns.
if you DVR a show it counts as a view
Still, other than Alexa, no song has more than 15,000 Spotify streams or 40,000 YouTube views, that’s a bad sign for viability.
Not yet. Give it more time.
Nice to see a fellow American!
You make excellent points. It’s too early to be making predictions about its cancellation.
I think it has a lot of potential…it just needs fine-tuning (and lots of it). That being said, I could see NBC using the low live ratings as an excuse to axe it.
The problem is the real lack of diversity. Every song feels very similarly produced and dare I say it there is a whiff of inauthenticity about it all with the overly synchronized dancing and the lights and the showy elements. As lots of other people have said, it reminds me of Sweden’s national selection and America is not Sweden. In order for this to work, this needs to feel like it is American.
what do you mean by diversity? usually it means racial/ethnic diversity and it’s clear this heat had a very good representation…
Honestly I don’t watch this show. I prefer ESC. I don’t understand this page is for ESC…..
Anyone expecting ASC to get 3 or 4 cycles to prove itself has a fundamental misunderstanding of how US broadcast television operates.
The bottom-line is, as long as a show doesn’t go fractional over the course of a single season then a renewal can be considered.
To be fair, if they are going 11 at a time, we have 4 more qualifying rounds, the 2 semi finals, and the grand final for the thing to pick up some steam. So people who didn’t know about it might learn as it goes on and tune in, and some people will inevitably only show up for the finale even if they did know in advance. It might also be that some people will only watch stuff when their home state is on as well, and this first final had some really small states in it. When California and… Read more »
Agree with everything Elizabeth said. I’m waiting for my home state and hopefully for the show to find its groove.
Even if it doesn’t do well on NBC, it could get picked up by another channel, like what happened with The Courtship dating show they launched a couple weeks ago.
The Courtship, as far as I know, is effectively canceled and on burn-off mode on USA Network unless the remainder of its run actually perform better there.
The Courtship is also available for streaming on Peacock and a couple of cable channels like E! and SyFy. Not sure how ratings work there.
I hope it gets picked up by Netflix or the like. It has a fun vibe, better than the manufactured drama on a lot of these shows. Nowadays viewers are so fragmented, a show doesn’t have to be a huge hit to have a following.
what’s a cycle?
I enjoyed the show, but as others have said, it did feel more like a National Final to pick America’s entry for Eurovision, rather than an American version of Eurovision.
Puerto Rico seemed to get the spirit of it, and brought lots of flag waving etc
Americans love competitiveness, just look at the Super Bowl. They should use this to their advantage and make regions compete against each other, just like the Andra Chansen battles. They can switch it up every year to bring more diversity, etc. Week 1 – Northeast states VS Midwest states Week 2 – South states VS West states Week 3 – Territories & Islands VS Pacific states This will narrow down and shorten the competition, make people have more ‘state pride’ and root for their entry, which will ultimately bring in more viewers. Straight up copying the Eurovision format won’t work,… Read more »
The only thing I think is missing for promotional purposes is a YouTube channel. Now the performances are being uploaded on the NBC channel, but the broadcaster cannot promote too much on there as there is a lot to be promoted. Give us the same content Eurovision is giving us: teasers, full song releases released in January/February, more interviews and just fun stuff. I also love to see INDEPENDENT SONG RELEASES (I really hate that they treat the songs as if they’re NBC’s property…) because ASC is a way for new artists to gain fans and followers. ESC doesn’t do… Read more »
I agreed with everything you said! Even I was wondering why the artists are not releasing their songs themselves. ASC definitely needs a lot of promotion. Did Christer seriously think that the Melfest format would work in America? The voting is pretty messy too. I wish they would keep the voting in a single method like Eurovision, not like voting in Tik Tok or NBC app. And obviously like you said, they should announce the qualifiers on the same night. Wow, a lot of the comments have some great suggestions. Maybe one of us should be the executive producer of… Read more »
As an American fan of ESC, I thought ASC wasn’t half bad. It’s definitely not ESC, but I thought America would do worse.
I do wish songs and artists were released earlier, but for me the biggest crime of the show is the pacing. At ESC they can set up a stage in 1 min, here it took commercials and horrible postcards that IMO made the artist Unlikable.
The real winners of the night were the people who pre-recorded the show and could skip the adds and Hurston from Rhode Island who stole the show.
I watched and wasn’t too impressed, tbh. I agree about Oklahoma and Puerto Rico being highlights. Those were the only two that I gave my votes too. You’re allowed 10 per song. I did all 10 for Puerto Rico and 7 for Oklahoma, because at least 90% of it sounded like pre-recorded vocals rather than live.
As someone who actually lives here, they did not spend very much time beforehand advertising this. They only started talking about this maybe like a month or month and a half before opening night.
That short notice I think is a large part of it. The advertising campaign for this I feel could’ve been a bit better.
Also as someone who has been following this closer than the average american obviously, I STILL do not understand how the rules and format of the show are meant to work. There are a lot of unanswered questions. It does feel like we’re just learning about how the show works last minute as we go along. And it clearly doesn’t work the same way as ESC in terms of how things like voting and qualifying work.
Basically, the show and the way it works just needed to be talked about a lot more before the premiere
Well, no city is built in an entire day, this things take time. Give it a few more years and I think will be better. I mean, Eurovision started small, I think American Song Contest is doing the same. Also, remember that this is just heat one. There are four more heats coming up as well as 2 semi finals and a grand final, so who’s to say it wouldn’t get better til then.
Although I do have to agree with that tweet about releasing the songs before March. I also suggest they released the heat participants early.
Yes. They should have started small with just a few states the first year. Adding states next year that has their own pre selection. Let’s say 10 really good songs instead of 50+ songs. Can you really get 50 great songs?
Yes, if you get the right people there to write the songs. If there are tons of songs to pick from.
I’m not worried about the people who didn’t watch. What did the three million people who did think? I suppose we will know when we see next week’s numbers. From the little I’ve seen, it seems they were confused by Michael Bolton. Cheating. Not fair. I imagine these same people will also be surprised when the qualifiers go on to sing the same song again. I know it’s only week one, but a lot of people just don’t get it.
I don’t really understand why they implemented semifinals. It doesn’t make sense to have the same song performed potentially three times. It would be better to do more heats (using the extra time to improve format) with two qualifiers from each going straight to the final and that’s it.