Why ‘American Idol’ is No Longer Idolized

Last night, American Idol crowned Nick Fradiani the 14th season winner. Yet, the biggest talker is still that the at-one-time-mega-hit-series is going away after season 15.

The reasons? Because the winners lately have, for the most part, had irrelevant post-American Idol mainstream music careers and Simon Cowell's bleep-hole comments can't be heard.

At its peak, American Idol drew 36 million viewers for the 2006 finale. This year, the show delivered an all-time low 11.6 million viewers.  While 11.6 million viewers is nothing to sneeze at, high priced judges (and a host) and on-location filming in a variety of cities makes this show very expensive to produce.

So why has the show lost 25 million people in 9 years? People are getting bored with the show because the winners aren't ascending to greatness in the music business like they're supposed to.

Sure, you get a $350,000 recording contract, but people were expecting Kelly Clarkson (season 1 winner) and Carrie Underwood (season 4 winner) and, instead, have too many winners quickly descending into irrelevancy.

I'm sure a few of these singers have quietly had successful, Grammy-nominated music careers. But that's not what 30+ million people want; we want to watch you get famous and hear you on the radio for a decade after and tell people we watched you grow professionally into the superstar you've become.

To help me illustrate my point, here are the season 1-13 American Idol winners . Think back to the last time you heard their music on the radio or downloaded their music. You'll have trouble recalling either of those for most of them:

Season 1 - Kelly Clarkson
Season 2 - Ruben Studdard
Season 3 - Fantasia Barrino
Season 4 - Carrie Underwood
Season 5 - Taylor Hicks
Season 6 - Jordin Sparks
Season 7 - David Cook
Season 8 - Kris Allen
Season 9 - Lee Dewyze
Season 10 - Scotty McCreery
Season 11 - Phillip Phillips
Season 12 - Candice Glover
Season 13 - Caleb Johnson

Certainly a MAINSTREAM MUSIC career isn't the only way to define success for most artists. But if you're on a mega-popular TV show, it's the only standard these singers should be held to.