American Song Contest was... better than I expected!
Format: They have the audience vote for 3 contestants to advance to the next bracket. They also have a panel of judges, one from each state, who are from the music industry, and they are not allowed to vote for their own state. The judges get to pick one contestant to advance. So 4 musicians from each episode advance, in single elimination format.
They allow lip synching, though. I know, this is stupid, but if you look at
Alexa's performance, it's pretty clear she was lip synching. Everything else about her was great, though! She's a K-Pop star from Oklahoma, so she might have K-Pop fan power to get all the votes, anyway.
It's good to remember that they don't have 70 years worth of rules like Eurovision does, so they allow things like livestock on stage, which, unfortunately, nobody has taken advantage of, yet.
They had a lot of great stuff.
Here's the promo introducing the artists from the first episode. The cowboy rapper from Wyoming was awesome, and the guy from Wisconsin reminded me of Elvis on Sullivan, except with a coke addicted camera operator. Seriously, I wanted to murder the producer for half the show. They do not need to cut every 200 milliseconds! Another problem: Unfortunately, Michael Bolton can't belt any more. His voice sounds old and weak. The sound engineer should have fixed that. The girl from Mississippi would have been great, but she was mixed wrong, too, which suggests that not everybody lip synchs (I think we all expect the K-Pop star to lip synch, though).
How much was it like the real Eurovision? Well... I'll say the overall presentation was like American Idol, but without the judges, which would be a step in the right direction for American Idol. The performances were elaborate, flamboyant affairs, just like you would expect on Eurovision, and lets be honest, that's what's really important. As far as the judging goes... if you are a Eurovision fan like me, you predicted the musician the judges were about to select within the first few bars of seeing Hueston perform. Heston is a crooner from Rhode Island, and he did a simple, soulful, one guy on a bar stool song, after everybody else did massive, elaborate productions. Eurovision fans know the one dude on a stool song is like the Eurovision equivalent of Oscar bait.
So it's not the train wreck most people thought it would be. It's a little different, but it's still weird, and elaborate. It will be interesting to see how the show plays out.
