I studied a trend of blog mentions to predict the winner of American Idol, and I picked Taylor Hicks. Behold, Taylor Hicks is the winner. OK…so it was 50/50 probability.
I didn’t view the program yet, but it’s waiting for me on my TiVo should I desire (which I do). Joe Jaffe, who viewed via TiVo and timeshift, congratulates Fox for the great extravaganza. He says:
I almost felt bad that I skipped through every single one of the ads. I almost felt that I should have watched at least one in appreciation of the incredible entertainment. Naaaaaaaaaah.
Joe shouidn’t feel bad at all. American Idol was one King Kong of an advertisement to promote Fox and the mega music brand we now refer to as Taylor Hicks. There will be huge incremental payoff here, even with a few missed views of Fox’s sponsors’ 30-second commercials. Generally speaking, ad-skipping is not popular enough yet to have caused terrible damage to the sponsor’s potential audience, but the issue is creeping up. It won’t be long.