It seems to me, here on the West Coast, that the attitude of JWs has really shifted over the last 20 years. I think there used to be a more fanatical mentality about such things. When I was a little kid, any show of that nature that had "Idol" in the title would definitely be out, since you are admittingly "idolizing" these people.
Now there are a lot fewer hardcore JWs. Largely because they all got old and died, but also because the 1914 generation teaching was canceled. Service time bears out that there is a lot less "zeal" in the congregations nowadays.
To be honest I get the sense that JWs feel largely kinda lost and aimless with all the recent changes. Like, if the end isn't imminent, what are we doing? Sort of a mini-version of what happened after 1975.
But 1975 was before the JWs reached a saturation point in the population. They could still recover and have tremendous growth. Now they've reached saturation... they're about 0.4% of the population and growth is hitting the wall. The next decade will be interesting as it's obvious that upper management realizes that big changes are needed just to remain a going concern.
Uh... we're still talking about American Idol, right? ;-)
