This from an article about (oy...) American Idol in Time Magazine:
PEOPLE LIKE TO BE SURPRISED
BY WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOWIdol has figured out the challenge of mass entertainment: how to please an audience that craves novelty but rarely rewards the jarringly new.
The New Old is the aesthetic of mass-market America...The ideal Idol performance--a hip hop Sweet Home Alabama, a beatboxed Time Of The Season--mashes up old and new, letting viewers feel cool in their squareness.
In other words, as has been said here many times before, and foist upon by FOPs ad nauseum:
"The audience isn't as hip
as you think they are...
or want them to be."
and