BLAST FROM THE PAST: XFUS1 SPOILERS

Below the jump:

AMERICAN NINJA WARRIOR, SEASON 5: MOVING ON TO VEGAS

Congrats to the following athletes who have made it to the next round:
(COMP=completed 2nd round course; in parentheses and # is rank in the beginning round)
With ~, are Vegas veterans from last year; ranking from last year is out of the 90 that went to Vegas
~ without a number means went to Japan (Vegas equivalent in past years)
% Means has participated in competition in past years but didn't go to Vegas/Japan before
With * are Stage 2 ranks in Vegas last year, adding in Vegas runs, out of 24 participants

FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE: SINGING COMPETITIONS VS AMERICAN RADIO

So we at jork vs TPTB know that the singing competitions mostly want to create a good show with filler, but with regards to having "marketability for the radio?" Take a peek after the jump for analysis.

IDOL CONTESTANT SINGING ABILITY VERSUS SONG CREATIVITY

So I recently wanted to analyze the trends between how far Idol contestants made it relative to their singing ability and song freshness/creativity factor. I'll explain more in detail later, but for now, toy around with the complete set of data I made, exclude several seasons or placements, and see how the trends hold up. I'll elucidate in more detail later. The higher the placement value, song creativity factor, and the singing ability, the better.

AI12 ALGORITHM-BASED POWER RANKINGS, WITH EMPHASIS ON SONG CHOICE

So for the first official post of AI12, we're going to analyze the forward momentum of the contestants with a heavy emphasis on song choice/creativity. In other words, do an old song? Get docked off. Do a song that has been done a bajillion times on the Idol stage? Get docked off. Performing the song well is only one part of the equation. 

TOP 10 PRE-IDOL/X FACTOR MUSIC, TOP 10 POST IDOL/X FACTOR MUSIC

So we've always wondered about the sort of under the radar music that everyone loves pre-singing competition shows and post-singing shows. Through the help of youtube and past spoilers, I've re-surfaced these videos, and made my ranking of the top 10 pre Idol/X Factor and top 10 post Idol/X Factor music. Enjoy.

ANALYZING THE FORGOTTEN WGs OF IDOL IN EPOCH 3

So, as we've already established in Epoch 3, we've had a ton of WGWGs win. But what about the remaining WGs that were cast by the wayside? It might be constructive to see what brought the eliminations of these WGs, to see if there could be "strategic" casting of WGs in the future. Since this first occurred in Epoch 3, we'll analyze the ones found in Epoch 3. We'll only focus on the ones who got eliminated outside of the top five, because if they're in the top five, clearly the audience favors them.