America’s Got Talent Fan Site

   Bianca Ryan chose to seek fame as a torch singer, and it’s all the more impressive that she’s all of 11.

The Mayfair girl, who soon starts sixth grade at School Lane Charter School in Bensalem, will sing again tomorrow night on the NBC show America’s Got Talent (8 p.m., Channel 10), where she’s in the semifinals. Phone lines will open after the show, and she’ll be back Thursday for results. Tomorrow’s song is “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin.

Bianca’s first appearance, on June 28, has turned into one of the most popular videos on YouTube.com, the video archive part-owned by NBC.

Bianca stepped onstage in a black-and-white dress her father bought her at Macy’s and belted Jennifer Holliday’s “And I Am Telling You” from Dreamgirls, blowing away the judges, especially Brandy. Piers Morgan, the grumpy judge, told her: “Change your hair. Change your dress.”

Bianca’s father, Shawn, a touring musician who gave up his career after Bianca was born, says this fame thing was her idea. In early ‘04, “she asked me to bring her to an audition of Star Search in New York. I said, ‘What are you going to do when you get there?’ ”

Sing, she said. He knew she’d been singing since she was little, but he asked if she could sing well. “I’m not bad,” she replied. She got two callbacks and was asked to be on the show.

She lost, but came back shortly after to win a trip to Disney World in a talent contest sponsored by WOGL-FM (98.1). She followed that with two appearances on Amateur Night at the Apollo and an appearance on the TV show Showtime at the Apollo.

Bianca, accompanied in California by her mother, Janette, says she likes R&B and gospel and counts Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Patti LaBelle as inspirations.

America’s Got Talent News

 America’s Got Talent Rapping Granny Revolt

The stupidest line in the premiere of America’s Got Talent came at the end of the two-hour slog. “Rapping Granny,” exclaimed judge Piers Morgan, “you are what this show is all about.”

Wrong, Mr. Token Snippy Brit Who Wants to Grow Up to Be Simon Cowell.

America’s Got Talent is not about a bobbing senior in an apron hoping to win a million-dollar prize. The already popular TV-talent contest, poised to be a summer ratings hit for NBC, is more about the Clapping Viewer than the Rapping Granny.

Yep, it’s all about us.

The show, which airs Wednesday night at 9, is all about the audience’s cheers and jeers, and not a professional digit-snapper named Bobby Badfingers or a 60-something male stripper with a bronzer addiction. Like the many other voter-based contests on TV, America’s Got Talent is about giving viewers a voice in the entertainment world. We get to choose which novelty act - the 8-year-old stand-up comic? the 76-year-old lady belting out “God Bless America”? - will become this summer’s big star. We get a sense of power.

Traditional thinking has it that audiences love TV talent shows for the vicarious thrill of seeing a Taylor Hicks-ish nobody become a somebody. “I’m looking forward to the American Dream,” judge David Hasselhoff said on America’s Got Talent.

And that up-from-nowhere excitement may have been true in the late 1940s with Ted Mack & the Original Amateur Hour (formerly a radio show) and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. The folksy Godfrey ushered unknown performers before a newly TV-wired nation and fed into the much-loved myth of being discovered in a drugstore, as was falsely said of Lana Turner.

But the new generation of voter-based shows, including American Idol and its knockoffs, such as Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance and CMT’s Nashville Star, are about our empowerment, not the contestants’. They are little elections, opportunities to flex our muscles - particularly those on our dialing, texting and typing hand. With their text message and phone-vote abilities, the new contests make pop culture feel like a democratic process.

If we identify with anyone who appears on these shows, it’s the judges who sit in positions of authority. The most imitated element of American Idol has been the triumvirate of “experts,” those celebrities and professional snipes who get to voice our opinions in public. They represent us, not the contestants.

Cowell, the man behind America’s Got Talent, wisely chose Morgan, Hasselhoff and Brandy as judges to re-create the three-monkeys chemistry he has with Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul on Idol. They span the tough (Morgan), the middling (The Hoff), and the easy (Brandy). Indeed, with her wildly generous pronouncements, Brandy rivals Abdul in the indulgent department. “It’s different, it’s hot, it’s right now,” she gushed to an a cappella group.

Later in the summer, a few other interactive contests will appear to stir us from viewing passivity. Like American Idol, America’s Got Talent and American Inventor, they will make us into little moguls who vote in a virtual board meeting. ABC will have The One: Making a Music Star, and HGTV will have Design Star. And next year, Steven Spielberg will invite us to create the next big Hollywood director with Fox’s On the Lot. The show, co-produced by Spielberg and Mark Burnett, is bound to speak to the viewers’ inner film critics.

Perhaps ABC should have given us voting rights on its new contest, Master of Champions. The show, which airs Thursdays at 8 p.m., includes an old-fashioned audience meter, for fans on the set. But we at home are left fidgeting while watching this reality loser. The premiere was baffling in its sheer pointlessness. If America’s Got Talent is like The Gong Show, then Master of Champions is like The Broken Gong Show.

In the first hour, two drift-car drivers had to grate cheese rounds by driving in circles on the stage. Seriously, a critic couldn’t have asked for a more ready metaphor for the entire show. Cheese, going in circles, grating - it’s all there.

America’s Got Talent News

 Does America Have Talent?

America is apparently bursting at the seams with talent.

Thousands of people who think they have “it” line up at auditions around the country hoping for their shot at fame and dreaming that the rest of us will buy their albums, clothes and fashion spreads.

Those of us without “it” seem to be happy watching everyone else make fools of themselves. That’s because we know most of those “talented” people really aren’t, and they’re just trying to be bad enough to get their few minutes of fame. They’re all hoping to become the next William Hung, who parlayed a bad voice and dance moves into a record deal.

If you can survive the crush of foolish wannabes, there is something fascinating about watching people with special skills try to prove they’re the best on live television. It’s just that there are now so many such shows that the uniqueness is disappearing.

This summer, we’re being asked to devote hours and hours to a wide variety of shows that are all pretty similar at heart. There are three hours of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” another three hours of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” three hours of ABC’s new and low-rated “The One: Making of a Music Star,” two hours of CBS’ “Rock Star: Supernova,” one hour of the often-funny “Last Comic Standing” on NBC, and an hour of the just-ended stunt show “Master of Champions” on ABC. (That’s not to mention the fashion search on “Project Runway” and the interior designers competing on “Design Star.”)

That’s a lot of talent to deal with — especially for Sarasota viewers, because two local singers are competing and need your votes. Syesha Mercado is on “The One,” and Chadwick Watkins made the semifinals on “America’s Got Talent.”

There’s hardly time left in the week to watch good old scripted dramas, such as the summer cable hits “The Closer,” “Rescue Me,” “Monk” and the wonderful new “Psych.”

The proliferation of these shows is no surprise. Network executives try to latch on to any idea that seems to work, so “American Idol” has spawned all these imitators.

But talent shows go way back to vaudeville and radio days, when “The Original Amateur Hour” was an early hit that eventually transferred to television. Ted Mack’s series helped discover Gladys Knight and Pat Boone during its run from 1948 to 1960.

“Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” ran for 10 years (from 1948 to 1958), and introduced future stars such as Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett and Connie Francis. (These shows weren’t infallible. Elvis Presley apparently flunked auditions for Godfrey’s show.)

And don’t forget the syndicated “Star Search,” the original version with Ed McMahon, which ran from 1983 to ‘95 and introduced us to singers Linda Eder, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé Knowles and Alanis Morrisette, and comedians Rosie O’Donnell, Brad Garrett and Chris Rock.

So you just never know which future superstar might turn up on one of these new variations.

Most of the shows are looking for singers, but “America’s Got Talent” is a bit like the old Ed Sullivan variety show, with a singer one minute and a juggler, acrobat or fire eater the next. One of the finalists is a young girl who yodels.

But what does the future hold for the winners of such shows, other than careers in Las Vegas or in Cirque du Soleil? They’re not necessarily looking for future stars, but wouldn’t it be nice to think the shows might help to establish a future star?

The contestants are often the key on this new breed of talent shows. But the judges play a crucial role. The bickering among the “Idol” judges is as important to the entertainment value as the singing performances. Watching the “Dance” judges, you might actually learn something about what it takes to be a dancer.

You don’t get much from the three judges on “America’s Got Talent.” David Hasselhoff, Brandy and Piers Morgan create a strange mix of nonsensical comments most of the time. But look at what they’re judging.

Sometime soon, viewers will tire of all these shows, and they’ll disappear (although “Idol” may be immune for a while). Then we’ll latch on to whatever seems to be the next latest trend.

But wait. Fox is preparing for another talent show, this one with celebrities called “Duets.” “Idol” judge Simon Cowell is one of the producers of this show, which matches professional singers with celebrities famous for other things, and they’ll be singing duets.

The results could be wonderful or wonderfully awful. Or maybe just bad. We’ll find out when it starts Aug. 29.

America’s Got Talent News