American Idol, The Voice, and other TV programs of this genre owe their popularity to tapping into the audience’s dreams of crashing through the existing barriers to celebrity--i,e, "becoming somebody."  When a previously unknown singer vaults to national stardom based on what he does on the show and how the audience likes him, we all feel a sense of vicarious triumph.  

The show is thus also about the possibility of no longer feeling small and insignificant.  It is also profoundly anti-establishment.

At the same time, however, we don’t truly want to destroy the "bigger world" of which the celebrity system is a part.  We don’t fantasize about the winners going on to play obscure gin mills and bowling alley lounges;  we want them to be celebrities just as big as the ones we now have.  The show must therefore strike a delicate balance between perpetuating the cult of celebrity, and attacking it (in much the same way that the public maintains a love-hate relationship with superstars of all kinds).