We Watch . . . So You Don't Have To

By Lisa de Moraes
Thursday, May 11, 2006

Presumed "American Idol" winner Chris Daughtry went down last night.

No one seemed more surprised than Daughtry himself, who just 24 hours earlier, during Elvis night on the singing competition, had prattled on happily to show host Ryan Seacrest about his mess o' fans, the Chris-aholics, and all the great stuff they've been showering on him, like belt buckles, cologne and junk food.

He wanted all the Chris-aholics watching at home to know he wears boxer briefs.

We think that's what did him in.

Chris definitely should have taken a strong pro-boxer or pro-brief stand. It's this shilly-shallying around with "hybrids," as Seacrest called them, that does so much to undermine the resolve of the "Idol" voter. That's our story and we're sticking with it.

Of course it might have been his decision to sing "Suspicious Minds" the previous night that caused the Chris-aholics to turn their backs on their leader. Yes, that's it. The image of angry rocker Chris singing the cheesiest Elvis song ever while wearing boxer briefs was more than they could bear. Voters have turned on their candidate for less.

Anyway, Chris was shocked. Surprised as no booted "Idol" contestant has been shocked in five seasons to date.

He even said so. "I'm a little shocked," he told Seacrest, who also looked shocked. Ditto judge Paula Abdul, though we could see only the top of her head because she had buried her face in her hands when Seacrest announced that Chris was out. Katharine McPhee, standing onstage with Chris, was open-mouthed, while judge Simon Cowell looked stricken, nervously stroking his face with one finger while contemplating the unpleasant prospect of having to make a pop star out of goofy silver-haired dweeb Taylor Hicks.

Taylor had just given his second Karaoke-with-a-capital-K performance in two days of "Jailhouse Rock" -- this time at the request of Rebecca Romijn, who was in the audience so that she could give a spontaneous shout-out to her new movie "X-Men: The Last Stand," opening soon. From Fox -- just like "American Idol."

Let this be a lesson to you, remaining "Idol" contestants Taylor and Elliott Yamin. Maybe even Katharine, who received the fewest votes after Chris. No shilly-shallying!

* * *

Despite various factions' best efforts to whip ABC's bird-flu flick into a ratings pandemic, "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" pulled in a sickly 5.3 million viewers Tuesday.

That's about 21 million fewer viewers than Fox clocked in the same 8-to-10-p.m. period with Elvis night on "American Idol" followed by "House."

It's also about 10 million fewer viewers than CBS averaged with "NCIS" and "The Unit."

(In fairness, it was on a par with NBC's audience for its melange of "Outrageous Moments" and "Scrubs" originals and reruns.)

"Bird Flu" was devastating -- to ABC's May sweeps averages. The network's ratings were down about 56 percent compared with the Tuesday broadcast of its "Ten Commandments" remake early last month, and down more than 40 percent compared with its season average in the time period.

In the days and hours leading up to the broadcast, various government agencies and special-interest groups scrambled to get a piece of the panic that would follow the disaster thriller about an outbreak of avian flu in the United States.

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a viewers' guide, letting people at home know that it "is a movie not a documentary; it is a work of fiction designed to entertain and not a factual accounting of a real world event." It gave such "what to do if you get it" pointers as "put used tissues in a waste basket" and "cough or sneeze into your upper sleeve if you don't have a tissue."

The Center for Consumer Freedom, which is funded by restaurants and food companies, criticized the movie as an "irresponsible distortion" that plays on Americans' fears. The group's director of research called it a "reckless fac-u-mentary ratings grab" and a "crass exploitation of current events apparently designed to panic the public," according to Dow Jones subsidiary MarketWatch.

Various health academics volunteered to talk to the media about the grave situation. "We're trying to take advantage of a teachable moment," Leah Devlin, North Carolina's health director, told the Associated Press.

Grievously, almost all Americans did not care. Most, no doubt, mistook it for a news special and did not bother to watch. Either that, or they knew that, as made-for-TV disaster thrillers go, this one would have a shocking lack of big special effects -- no earthquake causing California to fall off into the ocean, no super-tornado turning Chicago into succotash, no mondo flood drowning the Statue of Liberty, no sharks biting coeds in two during spring break, no herd of extreme-weather-sensitive poisonous frogs hippity-hopping nervously through a fashionable Washington reception.

ABC had seemed to acknowledge in that news release it put out about the project the lack of boffo special-effects-jammed action sequences, the one that went:

There are times that test and challenge the soul of a community or nation. News images and headlines tell stories of rising waters, quaking ground and tragic acts by man himself. But the real story, the human story, is found in the lives changed forever, in the strength of the survivors, and the resilient hope that gives them the courage to recover.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Oh, sorry. Are they through?

Where was I. Oh, yes -- to be sure, it's a shame ABC's bird flu wasn't a flesh-eating bird flu.