Webster's defines "literacy," in its most general sense, as "having knowledge or competence," as in "computer literate," or "politically literate." Thus "media literate" means having knowledge or competence in understanding media.
Without media literacy, you can only know what others tell you about "American Idol," such as this story in Monday's New York Times.
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With media literacy, you have knowledge and competence for looking at "Idol" in a way that gives you information to make your own judgments and decisions. The difference? Without media literacy, you may think that the talk about "conspiracy theories" is all about who won. With media literacy, you will realize that, if there were a conspiracy theory, it was partly about the winner, but mostly the show. You will understand why the Fox TV and the show's producers gave deep, satisfied sighs of relief when Kris Allen won.
The main media literacy tools in play here are timeliness, novelty, prominence, the threat to the status quo, emotional proximity and sensationalism.
"Timeliness," in media, means that everything gets old. News starts to get old as soon as it is published. That is why, in mass media, there has always been a race to be first with the news. But it also applies to entertainment and advertising. It's a longer shelf life than news, but on television (since we're talking about television), sooner or later entertainment gets old. Even "Seinfeld." Even "American Idol." Audiences never tire of conflict, or of the threat to the status quo, which are the core values of "American Idol." But they weary of this particular conflict, or that kind of threat.
After four to six years, the producers start worrying about the show getting old, and the audience losing interest. That was the big story about "American Idol" before the present season began. "Changes" were made, a judge added, auditions modified. "Reinvention" is a media buzzword; Madonna is the ranking expert in "reinventing" herself. Always, timeliness is the enemy, and it is as relentless in the media field as entropy is in physics. The remedy is novelty. How do we make it new again?
This season, the changes didn't work. Ratings were down. Producers got defensive. "It's ridiculous how big this show is," one told The Times. Something needed to happen. Then something did. Nothing like a sudden star, a fresh sensation, startling prominence, to bring the audience back to a show. In Britain, it was Susan Boyle. In America, it was Adam Lambert, whose impact was compared to Elvis Presley. The audience started to fall helplessly in love with him, a phenomenon called emotional proximity.
Trouble is, Lambert became too much of a sure thing. He moved to the front early and stayed there. If there's no horse race, no conflict, no "who's gonna win" threat, people lose interest. People started looking back in the pack, looking for someone to restore the threat, even hoping for someone to make it a race. They were looking for an underdog, which is the "David and Goliath" form of emotional proximity that is even stronger than Elvis worship, because more people identify with it. The economy crisis has turned America into a nation of Davids. Two hundred million adult American backs can hold up a lot of weight, but this is ridiculous.
And now "American Idol" has provided a David. Kris Allen. How lucky can Fox TV get? The threat lives! Millions more Americans, who will take their Davids where they can find them, even ones named Mine That Bird, are aware of "American Idol" than if Adam Lambert had won. Lambert will still get rich, Kris Allen will get rich, and, most of all, the guy that Fox needed to win, did. Next season Fox can play the threat card for all it is worth, framing "American Idol" as the all-American show where anything can happen, and probably will.
Last but not least, the "Idol" David comes with minimal cost to American culture. Critics fret that entertainments like "American Idol" threaten to drag the culture into a mindless, unprincipled wasteland. But the critics overlook another media tool, a law, actually, which states that the mass media is an exercise in the power of small numbers. Nielsen Media says 28.8 million viewers out of a population of 304 million watched the "Idol" finale, meaning 275.2 million of us were doing something else. Remember that, when critics try to call mass media the end of civilization.
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