Though it comes across as more awkward than compelling, On The Lot continues to offer an intriguing view of audience fragmentation and demographic appeal. It occurs to me that the show is as much a study of whether or not the viewers of the show prefer a certain genre or a certain aesthetic rather than a competition to see who is the most talented.
This stands in stark contrast to American Idol, in which genre isn't as much of a variable, and the variations in style between singers are limited. One could say that Chris Daughtry and Taylor Hicks had very distinct styles and that they chose songs from very different genres (Nickleback-esque "rock" vs. Doobie Bros Blue Eyed soul). Still, I never got the feeling that contestants won or lost based on the appeal of their chosen genre or stylistic influences. I do, however, get that feeling with On The Lot.
You have one contestant, Jason Epperson, who makes films with a certain down market appeal - a rather obvious physical comedy that may or may not have been making fun of 'tards and a drug story cum heavy-handed Christian allegory. Then you have Jess Brillhart - an NYU film school grad whose first two films have an arty bend to them. Are we to believe that the audience will be adept at comparing apples to oranges, determining which filmmaker is better at their given nitch?
Even when all contestants are assigned a particular genre for a given week (e.g. horror or comedy), their writing choices betray their cultural perspective (urban, Southern, feminist, sci-fi dork, sappy romantic, arty weirdo) in a way that AI contestants' song or style choices do not. I get the sense that the range of AI contestants' cultural appeal is limited to white/non-white and gender demographic distinctions (and maybe pop rock vs. R&B vs. country, though the audience seems to lean heavily towards adult contempo R&B). In the end, I feel as though On the Lot viewers are more apt to vote according to their cultural perspective than AI viewers. So far, AI has had a fairly diverse group of winners (white man, white woman, black woman, black man if you count Ruben, country, R&B, pop rock). People keep watching because the record shows that their group (or the representative of their race/gender/taste) has a legitimate shot at winning. If you're group isn't represented in the winner's circle (or at least later rounds), there's not much point in participating - an example of voter disenfranchisement if there ever was one.
Still, I like to think that many of the AI voters vote based on one undefinable characteristic: chops. If you're black/white/country/R&B/man/woman, it doesn't really matter as long as you can carry a tune. I just can't imagine that the audience for On the Lot cares more about these filmmakers' abilities to tell comprehensible stories from a unique perspective more than they care about which filmmakers' cultural backgrounds and sensibilities jibe with their own. It would be interesting if a few of the filmmakers began to understand this and started to adapt their work to the tastes of the voting public.
As it happened, I think the filmmaker with the narrowest cultural appeal (arty Jess) made the worst film this week, while down-market Jason's effort was passable. I'd like to say that Jason's success will prove my theory of demographics over style and substance, but I'm not sure its that clear cut. Just have to keep watching.
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