Everyone watched it for Simon Cowell because he crushed people's dreams. Aside from that no one gives a shit about someone else success. Society is too cruel to accept an average nobody to get rich and famous. I mean look at 80% of the so called idols now. The only popular ones are those that branched out from pop music. There are only two success stories from this show:
Kelly Clarkson and William Hung.
Aside from that everyone else found their niche in music and made as much as they could from there.
American Idol is just a typical reality show: Watch the failures and laugh and point.