Does race matter to generation Y? The politics of identity in Australian Idol

From its inception in 2003, Australian Idol has been a huge television ratings success, only seriously slowing down in its final season of 2009 when the final was watched by ‘only’ 1.4 million viewers, compared to 3.4 million in its first season (McWhirter, 9 January 2010). Despite some ‘cosmetic’ changes, such as various changes in the judging panel and the incorporation of London as an additional site for auditions, the formula has been sustained since the beginning. The show’s popularity in the ‘glocalized’ Australian context can be attributed to two main factors that were in alignment. Firstly, the show was firmly embedded into Channel 10‘s youth appeal and slotted comfortably into that channel’s regular line-up of reality television, American teen shows and variety shows (also see Pia Jensen’s chapter in this volume on the way Australian Idol is embedded within Channel 10‘s programming). Secondly, the show directly appealed to Generation Y, not only in terms of identification with its participants but also in terms of its use of a syndicated network of technology-driven cross-promotion and media saturation. Generation Y is partly a marketing term and, like Generation X before it, is to some extent a construct that helps advertisers to ‘demographize’ a particular age group. There are in-depth definitions and sociological explanations of Generation Y available elsewhere (see Huntley 2006), but for the purposes of this chapter, a number of characteristics are important. Born roughly between 1980 and 2000 to Baby Boomer parents, Generation Y is technology savvy, social and achievement oriented. Most importantly, ‘they value difference, diversity and change in all aspects of their lives’; indeed two of the rules this generation lives by are: ‘aggressively pursue diversity amongst people’ and ‘change is good’ (Barna 1995, cited in Huntley 2006). Some of these characteristics also apply to previous generations, but not to the same extent and not in the same configuration. Generation Y is ‘always connected’, aligning closely with the interactive nature of audience participation in Australian Idol, which was most pronounced in the mobile voting system that directly influenced the show’s outcomes (for a more elaborate discussion of youth audiences and SMS voting behaviour, see Vebjørg Tingstad’s chapter in this volume). One of the outcomes of those Generation Y audience votes has been a consistently diverse and multicultural mix of participants and winners, which suggests a generation for whom a multicultural and diverse society is ʼnormal’ or even ‘desirable’. This in turn created a space where the Australian Idol contestants could confidently perform their authentic self, however they chose to define that.