It’s taken me a few days to sort out what I want to say about Idol Gives Back. First, let me say that I think it’s great that an entertainment program that draws such a huge audience has tried to use that influence to help people in need. I’ve heard reports that Idol Gives Back has raised between 30 and 60 million, so far, which is certainly no small thing. I think that the judges and the celebrities involved sincerely and wholeheartedly wanted to do a good thing.

Having said that, here are my concerns. Early on it was mentioned that several corporate sponsors would make donations based on the voting. In the end, only Fox’s parent company made donations based on votes. Granted, they donated a whopping $5 million, which may have been more than if other companies had participated. I’m particularly disappointed in Ford, whose main contribution seems to have been donating the proceeds from fan downloads– that sounds like the fans are making contributions, not Ford. Other corporate sponsors have been less than forthcoming about the amounts that they donated, leaving viewers to wonder was it a thousand or a million that they donated? Don’t get me wrong, anything is better than nothing (have you donated yet?), but it would be nice to see a little honesty on the subject.

Now, another concern. I think it’s great that they didn’t kick anyone off last week. It would have seemed really weird if they had. BUT I think they should have told the contestants ahead of time, rather than leaving someone to think they were going home. Perhaps the contestants had some idea (Ryan’s “most shocking results ever” clued us in– as Ellen Degeneres said “there are six of them, and one is going home– how shocking can it be?”), and they dragged it out as little as possible. But it still seems unnecessarily hard on the contestants. I also don’t like that they’re sending two home next week. I didn’t like Idol Gives Back being held within the context of the contest. It just seemed weird to me. Was I supposed to care who performed well, while watching images of children dying of malaria? If Fox does this again, perhaps it can be a special post-season Idol (although I don’t if it would have gotten the same viewership, which is certainly a consideration).

What did I think of the star performances during Idol Gives Back? I thought they all did a really nice job. I particularly liked Annie Lennox and Carrie Underwood. And, of course, Jack Black. The Staying Alive video was fun. Celine Dion performing with Elvis was interesting and vaguely disturbing all at the same time. The Elvis in the performance was a hologram, which is a bit weird to me. I think I would have been more blown away by Madonna and Bono singing together– but maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I give Fox and A for effort, and I’d say a B for execution. And an A+ for all the children and adults who will benefit from the proceeds. If you haven’t given yet, why not? We did donate, by the way. We thought about basing our gift on comments on the site or some other gimmick. But, in the end, we decided just to give. I hope many of you did the same– if not to the Idol Gives Back charities, then in some other way.

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