[James]

Big Brother supremo Peter Bazalgette is planning a reality TV show where the public would choose a candidate for elections.

Power Idol? Now politicians audition for votes

Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday January 4, 2004
The Observer

First Pop Idol made an unlikely star of overweight singer Michelle McManus. Now the format faces its toughest challenge yet: creating the nation's first genuinely populist politician.

The producer behind the reality TV hit Big Brother is in talks with broadcasters about a political version of Pop Idol - a nationwide show designed to choose a brand-new candidate for election.

Whether Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell would be retained to hurl insults at the Westminster contenders remains unclear, but those behind the project insist it is a serious proposal.

'Broadcasters have not yet had the chutzpah to commission a formated popularity contest for politics, but we're now discussing it with them,' said Peter Bazalgette, chairman of production company Endemol, the maker of Big Brother. 'This may be the key to younger voters watching political programmes.'

Just as Pop Idol took the manufactured nature of chart music to its logical extreme, applying a similar idea to politicians - who increasingly operate by focus group, trying to work out what voters want, then giving it to them - makes sense, says YouGov pollster Stephan Shakespeare, writing today in The Observer.

'Government by focus group is something we all disdain as short-sighted and superficial - but what if the focus group were millions of people, actively deliberating together as we exercise our power?' he says.

'We know that the public loves the idea of voting for "independents", but the system makes it hard for independents to get themselves noticed. So it is almost a public duty for someone to create a platform to help independents get an equal chance.'

The project coincides with the separate launch next month of an internet-based political party, www.yourparty.org, which will start with a blank sheet of paper and ballot thousands of online 'participants' to come up with a genuinely popular manifesto. It hopes to stand candidates - strictly bound to implement that manifesto - in the European elections this June.

The venture is the brainchild of dotcom entrepreneur Dan Thompson, best known for helping to found the football and rock music website operation 365 Corporation, and aims to produce the first politicians 'directly controlled by the citizens'.

The projects raise questions over whether unleashed voters would demand measures such as the return of hanging or restrictions on abortion, causing crises of conscience for people's candidates.

Direct democracy can have its pitfalls, as the Labour MP Steven Pound found out last week.

He had agreed to try to get on to the statute books any proposal for new legislation chosen by a poll of Radio Four listeners, but was wrongfooted when they backed a law allowing householders to shoot burglars.

But Shakespeare believes that, given careful explanation and debate, citizens would use their powers wisely. 'My own experience as a teacher tells me that people only become responsible when they are given responsibility,' he says.

The Bazalgette project could be used to select candidates for anything from the London mayoral elections - famously won last time by an independent, Ken Livingstone - to 'people's peerages' or even Westminster seats. Even if the programme does not follow through by trying to get them into Parliament, any winner would be tempted to adopt a political career.

The Pop Idol format, jointly owned by pop manager Simon Fuller's 19 company and FremantleMedia, has been sold to 22 countries.

But the only country that is thought to have seriously attempted to create a 'reality politician' is Argentina, where a Buenos Aires channel launched The People's Candidate, designed to find someone to compete in the congressional elections.

From http://politics.guardian.co.uk/apath...115927,00.html

[Romantic Old Bird]

Sure you are not getting this mixed up with the 2004 American Presidential Election process James?

Sounds just about the same to me.

The result will probably be the same too. A talentless idiot elected by apathy

[James]

If the public are more involved in the process of politics through this it might make them less apathetic about politics.

More people probably vote in reality shows than in elections. And there seems - to me - to be a more direct link between the voting intentions in reality shows and what you get out of it at the end, unlike with politicians where the public gets consulted once every 4 or 5 years and that's it. Anything can then be done in your name.

You could say that the voting in Pop Idol 2 was political in a sense. Many people were voting for Michelle to make a statement in the talent versus image debate. So there was a purpose to it even if you didn't think she was the best singer.