Audience polls, are they really worth it?

Ok, conceded the fact that it’s the viewers who have to make a movie, a song or an album a hit or otherwise. Its the audience any artist has to cater to ultimately.

Ultimately – THAT is the keyword. More often than not the audience is capable of judging an end product only, sometimes even that erroneously. Not the raw material as such… How do you trust the audience to decide correctly whether or not a person has a great future as a playback singer, a dancer or an actor? How many artists in making have they been subjected to?

And how many wannabe singers do you think Jatin-Lalit, Aadesh Srivastava, Abhijeet, Alka Yagnik, Anu Malik, Javed Sahab, Ismail Durbaar and the likes have been subjected? How do you expect some tom dick and harry sitting in Ludhiana or Nagpur or some other place for that matter to judge about the dancing capabilities as well as maybe a Javed Jaffery or Prabhu deva would?

Isn’t it unfair on the contestants?

Last week, Deepali was voted out of Indian Idol. In my opinion, for whatever its worth, she is a far better singer than Ankita, Prashant and Puja. As Alisha Chinai rightly pointed out, performance is secondary. It’s the singing talent that counts first.

Similarly, Voice of India audience voted out Prantika. Another so very talented lady. But then in VoI the tragedy is that anyone who leaves, leaves a void behind. None of the most “talented” singers from the II would qualify even in the audition round of VoI, I guess.

But then, having gotten such a talent pool, why does one have to give their fates away into the whims and the fancies of the audience. No matter how much ever you appeal to the audience to vote sanely, sensibly, with discretion, they are always going to have prejudices.

Oh I am a bongaali, so I shall vote for Emon. I am a Hyderabadi, so my SMS goes to Mohd Irfan, Ah humre UP ka lalla hai, hum to Harshit ko hi vote denge…

Grow up people… It’s the talent not the regional biases that need to be recognized. And for this not only the audience, but the music show organizers, the judges and the contestants themselves have to grow up. Yes, lots of SMSes mean a lot of revenue. Agreed, Talent shows are money minting stores. But can’t you do something like this? Both the judges and the audience have some say in this matter. And let the esteemed judges take about 60% of weightage and let audience vote figure in the rest…

Does it make any sense? Or given the fact that with the exception of Shreya Ghosal all the other talent hunt “finds” have faded out of public memory, it’s just a sham anyways?