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I don’t like Catherine McPhee. 

If you don’t know who she is, Ms. McPhee is the fat-bottomed girl-du-jour on American Idol, a show my wife and I became addicted to the year that Fantasia Barino won the title.  American Idol started as a nation wide talent search for the next major music media marketing puppet ala Britney Spears, but a funny thing has happened over the last two seasons.  America’s musical roots have staged a comeback right on the show.  What was once a talent show for predominantly no-talent former prom queens has now become a showcase for talented indie music wannabes and never-weres.  Last year’s winner was a country singer who’s album sales have been excellent in her genre and who’s face is plastered all over Nashville’s many media outlets.  Meanwhile, last year’s runner up (the clearly superior talent IMO) threw the contest on the last night and promptly cut an album through a more lucrative deal (genre: Southern Rock) that has since gone platinum.

That’s a win-win all the way around, and it dramatically affected the folks trying out for the show this year.  As of last night we had: a soul singer, a country singer, a hard rocker, a blues man, a funky white boy (whom I’d like to poke fun at, but Elliot Yamin has mad talent), and Catherine McPhee, the only one of the bunch who could do a credible Britney Spears impression.  Of those, one is already a working pro (Taylor – the blues man), on has clearly been an unsuccessful indie lead singer (Chris – the rocker), and three are children of established pros-turned-vocal coaches.  Indeed, Ms. McPhee’s mother is a voice coach.

Now don’t get me wrong.  If I wasn’t married, I would definitely sleep with Catherine McPhee.  She’s pretty, and she comes across on TV as likeable.  That’s fine.  That isn’t my problem with her.  My problem is the way that the folks on the show are trying to shove her down our throats, presumably because she is the one that they would feel most comfortable presenting as an industry product.  She actually looks like Kelly Clarkson, so it’s hardly a stretch of the imagination to imagine her amid a major media campaign. 

Imagine the following conversation about the potential marketing for Taylor Hicks as the next American Idol:

“The guy’s good.”

“He sings blues.”

“So?”

“So… Have you seen the sales figures for Blues lately?”

“Uh…”

“Yeah.  That’s what I thought.”

“Yeah, but--”

“But what?  This kid has more talent that B.B. King?  Or Eric Clapton?”

“Uh…”

“If those guys can’t sell records, neither can this kid.  Remember Reuben Studdard?”

“Point taken.”

“Yeah.  That’s why I’m the boss.  Listen: I want McPhee.  Don’t fuck this up.”

The problem with that thinking is that it leads to industry stagnation, a fact you may have read about elsewhere.  The major labels have been experiencing negative growth for a good while now, and the growth of online music availability is only part of the problem.  Another big part is that fewer folks want to buy the mass market music that most major labels are producing these days when there are now so many different ways to find music that appeals to each listener’s particular tastes.  In fairness, the majors still sell A LOT of records, but a LOT is a lot less than it used to be.  Moreover, the mass market core audience is also the online piracy target audience, and that’s a problem.  What’s needed is some experimentation, but that’s a tough proposition in a mass market setting where millions of dollars are at stake with every single album. 

This is where we see the true genius of American Idol.  American Idol offers a venue for the necessary experimentation while generating revenue on its own, plus it provides instant feedback as to both the relevance and popularity of potential new music products in almost real time.  All in all it’s a good deal for all concerned, and I’ve been enjoying it.  But it makes me wonder why these guys are trying to push an already mainstream act on us.  Wouldn’t this be the time and place to really take a risk and try something new?

I think it is.  But then again, I vote for Taylor Hicks every week.

Comics and the Catherine McPhee Syndrome

By now, I hope that what’s coming is obvious, but maybe it isn’t.  And in fairness, a direct industry comparison is inappropriate here because comics sales have been growing of late, and if the success of the recent New York City Comic Convention are any indicator (and it is, trust me), then it’s likely that comics are America’s NEXT BIG THING.  It’s unclear whether the coming resurgence will affect independent producers, but Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse should all be looking at sales and revenue growth for the next four to eight quarters, I would imagine.  Certainly the Market believes the hype.  Just look at Marvel’s stock pricing trends and current buy recommendations (ticker symbol MVL, for the curious).  Still, taking a statistical marketing approach, we can see now why the bubble will burst at some point in the not-too-distant future.

This chart is about 2 years out of date, but it is the kind of chart that one might use to analyze the comics marketplace.  Here we can see one genre dominates, and if you’re a major industry player, that is where you want to be: competing with the big boys for big dollars in the mass media market.  However, with this level of market saturation for one specific kind of product, it’s easy to imagine a time when the true mass media consumers, mainstream Americans, will grow tired of the industry as a whole.  This model is great for fads and hardcore fans but not so good for long term sustained industry growth.  There simply is not something here for everyone.

Thus the really interesting questions, similar to the one posed earlier for the music industry, are IMO these:

How do you experiment in this marketplace? 

If you’re NOT a major industry player, WHERE do you experiment?

I’ll let you think about that for a week, and we’ll come back to it.

Super Real

I didn’t have a chance to do my web comics research over the weekend, so this week’s Comic You Should Be Reading is Super Real from Superrealgraphics.com.  Super Real #3 is in Previews now for June, and so I was going to run this next week, but since I’m short on time, here it is now.

Super Real is a parody.  Where American Idol proves that every American wants to be famous, Super Real mocks us for our desire for fame.  Some people will do ANYTHING for fame, and in SR that means consenting to dangerous experimental surgery on live television.  The result is a kind of Real World meets Scary Movie meets Powers.

First a critique: writer/artist Jason Martin falls prey to a common problem amongst beginning writers.  He starts his story too early.  Issue 1 of this series is entertaining, but it is totally unnecessary.  Nothing happens.  In part I think that’s because Martin is trying to ape/parody Bendis’s decompressed approach, but where Bendis always manages to make the first issue quality teaser – usually by playing with the timing of his stories – Martin just starts too soon and spends an entire issue telling backstory.  He’s lucky that the art is fun and in color and that his dialogue is hot, or this book would have been dead on arrival.

Issue 2 is totally different.  Now we’re finally getting into it, so that while the action is still moderately paced, that works because the stage is set and again the dialogue and the art are spot on. 

In fact, the art is gratuitously over-the-top in every way, and that’s only forgivable because this is a parody where we get that these characters are trying to be super-sexy, but we’re in on the fact that THEY are the joke.

Bottom line: skip Issue 1 but definitely pick up Issue 2 and order Issue 3.  I’d recommend this book to fans of reality TV or 1970s era sex comedies.  It’s fun and funny stuff.

Stray Voltage

Not much in the way of Stray Voltage this week, both because I have to write the NEWS on my own site and because I’m running out of time and space here.  However I do want to take a minute to thank all of you who have downloaded HORIZONS.  We’re now well over 500 readers, and I’m finally starting to feel at least a little better about where we are with it overall.  We’re still going to make some changes, but 500 is a lot, and I don’t want to diminish what is clearly a success just because we hoped for MORE success.

Next week: more marketing and the long awaited look at web comics.  See you in seven!

About the columnist:

Dan Head is the President of Proletariat Comics, LLC.  Learn more about him and his work at www.proletariatcomics.com or by reading the phenomenal web comic Awesome Storm Justice 41.