if you’re chinese, you’ve probably heard about those chinese singing contests, of which the biggest in canada is probably the one held at wonderland every year. i think of them as glorified karaoke since it really is just karaoke where everyone wears shiny clothes and sings on a big stage. whenever i catch it on tv, i usually smirk at their passable technique and contrived attempts be a performer; all in a bid to hit it big as a karaoke idol. don’t you think that’s just like american idol?

i didn’t have a whole lot to do last night so i figured i would catch the last episode of canadian idol. i’ve never watched a full episode but i’ve seen a couple of minutes here and there. all i can say is that the canadian version is a poor facsimile of american idol. it actually looks like they photocopied the american one character by character except our copy is somehow uglier and less charismatic. in the end, i couldn’t stand to watch the whole thing, i became more interested in the negotiator which was playing on city tv at the same time.

you can’t fault the contestants for being bad tho, canada’s population is only one tenth that of the states, so only one of the contestants would even have made it onto american idol. however, i do fault them on choosing bad songs. all the idols sang selections from the new canadian idol cd that’s coming out; the guys’ selections were alright but two of the girls absolutely butchered their choices: whitney houston’s i will always love you and christina aguilera’s reflection. they had neither the range nor the voice to handle those songs. you can say that they have no formal training and are amateurs, but aren’t they promoting a cd?

speaking of promotion, there seemed to be articles daily in the metro dealing with canadian idol, and i noticed that other media outlets said nary a word about it. gee, i wonder if ctv and metro are owned by the same company? today there were articles heralding toronto 1, the new local station. i wonder if ctv and toronto 1 have the same parent company?

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: popculture, tv