With the success of American Idol, producers of the FOX reality show came up with a new idea for a reality show called SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE in the summer of 2006. Producers travel city to city across the country in order to find “America’s Favorite Dancer.” Dancers begin with an audition, then proceed to a call back if they are liked by the judges, where the judges then choose their top 20 favorite dancers to compete on the show. The dancers have to be well diversified in their dancing technique and skills and learn everything from hip hop to ballroom dancing. The dancers are paired up into male and female pairs to dance each week. The show is on two nights a week, with the first night being the Performance show, where America watches and then votes, and the second night being the Results Show, where the bottom two male and female dancers are voted off the show. At the end of the season, there will only be one winner and that winner will win $100,000 and of course some type of dancing contract. Oh, and not to mention that SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE also has their own cross-country tour just like American Idol.
As with many other popular reality shows today, SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE relies on America to call the hotline, vote electronically, or text message in order to vote for their favorite dancer. This just shows how well new technology has been integrated into television programs today. The producers have integrated the popularity of the internet and the ability to vote electronically online, and text messaging on phones in order to vote, which is a very recent fad that still intrigues me. It just fascinates me that you can send a text message that will be received and that is your vote. It’s so quick and so simple. Of course, they have to still have a hotline to call in votes for the people that are less media savvy. I know when I watched the show and voted, I would use all of the technologies to vote. I’d really be interested to see which technology was the most popular and brought in the most votes for them. I would guess that phone calls may still have brought in the most callers, because even though I enjoy texting and using the internet, I should keep in mind that there still are many Americans who are not as media savvy as myself and may not have the internet or text messaging on their phone.
What also intrigues me is the question of how skewed the numbers are because of people voting more than once, like myself. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to vote more than once, but there should be a limit set because then it’s almost unfair. I think the outcome could potentially be different if you could only vote once. That could also be the reason why many viewers of this genre of television shows believe their vote doesn’t count. It definitely does, but let’s face it-when they say they got 13 million viewers that voted the previous night, that number may definitely be much higher than the reality because of the amount of times someone votes. SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE also has a podcast which they call “FOXcast”, message boards, and even a newsletter. They are using various amounts of new media to grab and keep viewers tuned to their television program. I see the integration of all of this new media-electronic voting, text messaging voting, podcasts, message boards, newsletters, into the old media (television) as very positive and progressive because in today’s technological world you have to keep moving, or you’ll disappear along the way.
Question C
