Relevance of Common Mans Idol to mobile-TV, ie Finland Idol Network Karaoke

We've now had a day to digest the news about Finland Idol and the "Common Man's Idol" contest that ran parallel to it. This "network karaoke" or what we might call "community karaoke" makes a radical innovation to mobile-TV, a topic Alan and I have written and talked about at length.

So why is the Common Man's Idol in Finland that relevant? It is because it breaks down the last element of Network TV executive control in their media. Once again we see Community Dominating.

We have seen many steps into the community involvement in TV. First it was to voice your opinion about TV, live as TV was broadcast. Typical of this is SMS-to-TV chat. The TV viewers get to give their comments and those are broadcast live. Here the problem is that only on "pure" SMS-to-TV chat does "everybody" get their text messages aired. If it is a "comment ticker" like under a news show etc, then these are heavily edited as there is not enough time to show every comment. So while we can participate, not everybody gets to participate. There is an element of control.

This kind of contribution to TV has since evolved, so now we know we can submit photographs and videoclips to news. We can bring in our content and within certain rules, it gets aired. But also with these there is control by the TV broadcaster.

Then there is the aspect of actually controlling what happens next in that given TV broadcast. The first concept was MTV's Videoclash in 2001. Most of reality-TV voting is like this, we get to vote which contestants continue in the show. But here it is the producers of the reality show who select the initial contestants. We only get to voice our opinion of who should be thrown out of the show.

Then we have the aspect of user-generated TV broadcasts. Ranging from Tu Media's videoclip-to-TV "chat", to Three/Hutchison's video blogging service "SeeMeTV" - these are custom channels where user-generated content is shown. We are given a "minor" channel where we can show amateur content. We don't allow users full control of the show, we rather put those "troublemakers" onto their own channel.

That is why "Common Man's Idol" is such a radical departure. Up to now, if there was a TV show on the air, there was no way for average viewers to go and join that show. We could comment on it. We could send clips to it and hope they showed them. We could go and make our own videos and show them elsewhere. But if the TV channel broadcasts some show, we cannot just decide to join it.

Even with game shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which invites prospective candidates to take the phone-based (premium cost) test to try to get onto the show. Even that show only gives us a chance to try to be on the show. Never before could we decide to suddenly join a TV production.

So before, when we saw Pop Idol, or American Idol etc on TV, and then thought - my sister sings better than that person - it was not possible to get my sister onto that TV show.

That is where Common Man's Idol is such a radical change. Now as viewers in Finland watched the show on TV, those who thought they really should have been included, could just take their phone, call a number, and start to sing. As we saw from the stats in the previous 2 postings at this blogsite, the numbers are enormous. 1,682 Finns sang songs. 150,000 Finns voted. And they generated 1.95 Million votes.

I recognise that this time the Finnish Idols show did not have the Common Man's Idol winner join the show. But I promise you that some clever TV producer will very soon do exactly that. Turn the Common Man's Idol version into the "breeding series" to give its winner a guaranteed slot in the next actual Idols show. That is why this is a radical departure of TV from what has ever existed before.

Never before has the viewing public be able to decide to join into the TV show.

Now what we need is two things. One, this idea needs to spread everywhere to every Pop Idols variant to evolve and grow. But more importantly, TV producers beyond Pop Idols need to learn about it, and try to find ways to engage with their viewers in the same way.

Just like we have written about in our book, Communities Dominate Brands, this transition to community power is a fundamental shift, and it is a total redistribution of power. Up to now the producer of the TV show had absolute control over what/who is on the show. Some day in the future there will be many TV formats where the viewers find ways to bring the "worthy" participants to the show. A true "democratic" evolution to TV.

That is why this is a huge change to understanding the convergence in the area of mobile-TV.

NOTE - we have two closely related postings about this same topic for more if you are interested. Alan Moore wrote about the Myth of Branded Content with his take of it. And I did my first blog about this oncept in If You Thought Idol was Big on TV

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