FOX "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest, back center, and the show's judges (Simon Cowell, left, Randy Jackson, right, and Paula Abdul) are back for another season of the hit reality show.

Into the ‘Idol’

Oh my god. No, make that, Ohmygaaaawd! The "American Idol" Web site, idolonfox.com, has a countdown clock to the premiere of the show tomorrow night. The seconds are ticking away. It's like a NASA launch. Can you contain yourself? Is your one fear that before the show's fifth season premieres, you'll be struck by a flaming meteorite from space, blasted into splattered oblivion -- and you'll MISS EVERYTHING?

Many of you know exactly what I'm talking about. The rest are going, "Hah?" It's to the latter this article is addressed.

Let's start with a thesis statement: "American Idol" is the most perfect example of broadcast television yet devised.

OK, I'm hearing more "hahs?" out there. Some philosophical groundwork is clearly needed.

Television, unlike reading a book, listening to music or attending a group event such as a concert or a movie, is generally passive entertainment. There's no engagement with the active centers of the brain. Content flows out of the blue screen and slops into your skull, and you just sit there and take it. Worse, you like it. You want more. That's because television disengages your sense of discernment, your critical functions, your objectivity. Instead, it tickles your amygdala and revvs up your empathy engine. (Think of how soap opera fans call their favorite shows "my story.")

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Letting your brain go blank is a very Zen, restful experience. How many of you "unwind" by watching TV? All of you, admit it.

But what about those moments when something happens on the screen and you react? The comfortably numb buzz evaporates and you can't help yourself and you yell at the TV set, usually something like "You bonehead!" as if the bonehead can actually hear you.

There is another path, Grasshopper, another televised experience I'm going to call "projection TV," just to be confusing. These are shows in which the viewer can project himself into the events on screen. These can't be the comfy 48-minute drama arcs of network TV, no matter how you identify with the characters on screen, because the form of the medium itself forces closure. Rarely can it be a documentary, which is fact-chatter; nor news or talk shows or anything in which people sit and talk to you or, in the case of Fox News, snigger at you.

No, you can only project yourself into the flow of the show if the ending is unknown. More than that, if the apparatus of creating the ending is unknown or invisible. When anything can happen, your brain wakes up.

These are sports shows and reality shows and talent shows.

Televised sports are by nature contests, and viewers, despite themselves, are drawn to one side or another. They not only empathize with the team or the player, they mentally strategize with the team or player as well. (Know any Monday morning quarterbacks? Of course you do. Know any Monday morning "Gray's Anatomy" fans who excitedly rethink and reshuffle the entire cast and plot line? Of course you don't.)

Reality shows are popular for a reason. Boiled down to their essence, they're all what-if-it-were-me situations. They engage your cognitive processes. But they're by nature existential. No future, no past, no shelf life once the immediate situation has been resolved.

Talent shows (including game shows) thrust average people into competitive arenas where they fight for supremacy of the pack, using the toothy weapons of hitherto-untapped talent or brainpower or simple common sense. Talent shows are evolution theory, squared.

Still with me? OK, here's the punch line:

"American Idol" succeeds brilliantly as television because it exploits every possible iteration of projection TV.

It's a talent show, obviously. But when the ordinarily passive viewer votes for their favorite, they are engaged as a participant in the outcome. For the first time, you matter. The voting viewers are part of the show instead of being excluded.

Sure, the Idols are singing, but they're competing. It's a singing competition, as Simon likes to remind us. Every note, every inflection, every planned or unplanned hip swivel is taken into account and carries weight in the voter's analysis. That's not a talent show. That's a sporting event. Songs are just the weapons of choice.

And these contestants, let's not forget, are regular folks who, like all of us, sing in the shower. That's where the "reality" comes in. We are along for the ride as they are picked off, one by one, in the playoffs.

The judges are there really as audience surrogates, and the show, by sheerest accident, hit on a group that's nearly as entertaining as the contestants: eager-to-please-sir-may-I-have-another host Ryan Seacrest; bottom-line rhythm sectionist Randy Jackson; Paul Abdul, who is frankly goofy; snorting truth-teller Simon Cowell. I love them all.

Watch the way "American Idol" is staged, paced and managed, and in the essentials, there's not a whit of difference between it and a kickboxer contest. It's sports, reality and talent combined.

So there you have it. No one is neutral about "American Idol." You're either for it or against it; in it or, like, totally out of it.

Just imagine, in the upcoming political elections, if people actually got to vote for their favorites. But that wouldn't play in prime time.