The Rehearsal

-Oh, wow. -Yeah. So this is the room.

You'll be sitting here at this desk.

The singers are gonna come into this room one at a time,

and this is sort of where they need to stand.

Okay.

And they'll be singing from a list

of public domain songs we gave them.

-Right. -And that's just so

we don't have to pay the licensing rights

for the song. It just saves us money.

And then right away, I just make my decision

-at that moment. -Yes.

These are the tickets you give out

-if you want someone to move on. -Mm-hmm.

You know, we really want the best of the best,

so you can't be giving these out to anyone.

-The standard should be star potential. -Okay.

That's what I was told when I did it.

-What's star potential? -Star potential is someone

that you think could be a star.

Okay.

Anyone that doesn't meet that threshold,

you have to deliver the news that they will not be moving on.

You know, for a lot of these people,

they're coming in, and they feel

like their dreams are in your hands.

You're delivering this hard news.

You're saying no to someone.

You need to, you know, assert yourself in that way.

Are you okay with, like, delivering bad news or...

Just life.

When I was 23, I got my first job in television

as a junior producer for Canadian Idol...

-Idol! -(CROWD CHEERING)

The Canadian version of American Idol.

The celebrity judges you see on TV don't have time

to consider everyone that shows up

to these auditions.

So, what they don't show you is that all the singers

are first led into tiny rooms off camera

where junior producers like myself were tasked

with thinning the herd,

eliminating anyone that didn't have star potential.

All day long, I told people no to their face.

Some took the news okay, but many did not.

They broke down in front of me, crying,

pleading for another chance.

But no matter what, I had to hold my ground.

It was a brutal experience for me.

Every morning, I woke up in a new Canadian hotel room,

dreading what I would have to do.

When you know that whatever you say

is going to devastate the person across from you,

it makes you not want to say anything at all.

I was becoming convinced that this was the reason

some co-pilots have trouble saying no to their captain.

They just can't imagine a way for the interaction to go well.

But I've always wondered

if it could be done differently,

to have someone leave feeling good.

I could never figure out how to do this.

But maybe there was a co-pilot out there who could.

I recruited a sampling of first officers

from all the major U.S. airlines

to participate in a massive experimental study.

All these co-pilots had one unique quality

that made them special.

None of them have died in a plane crash,

which meant there's a chance that at least one of them

may have unknowingly cracked the code

to speaking up to a captain without making them upset.

Wings of Voice!

I hoped this could be revealed

with an aviation-themed singing competition

where any and all aspiring singers from across the country

were invited to apply.

It's not a singing TV show,

it's actually a singing competition

as part of another TV show

that has nothing to do with singing.

-Okay. -Oh, cool!

-So... -Is there like a prize

at the end or kind of what's the setup with it?

Okay, so the winner will get to sing, um,

a song of our choice

on national television with a full backing band...

-Oh, sick. -...in a partial recreation

of the Houston Airport.

-Wow. -Wow.

Uh, that was great.

Unfortunately, you're not moving on.

-Okay. -Thank you for your time.

-(SOBS) -You did good, baby.

You did good.

You did good, you did good. You did great.

I'm always proud of you. I'm always proud of you.

I had brought Canadian Idol back to life.

I love you.

I love you, too. -(CONTESTANT'S DAD KISSES)

Because the experience can be so brutal,

I found some co-pilots would try to get around

upsetting the singers by giving out

endless golden tickets.

So, yeah.

Well, congratulations, you're moving on!

Oh my goodness!

-(CONTESTANT SCREAMS) -(CONTESTANT'S MOM SCREAMS)

It was a byproduct

of this being a real competition.

-Congrats. -Thank you.

But ultimately, this was all about rejections.

Hey, I was a little surprised about that one.

You feel she was good?

-Yeah. Yeah.

You've sort of given a golden ticket to everyone?

I know, I know, I know.

That's what I was like, okay, okay. (LAUGHS)

We only want to give to the best, remember?

-The best, all right, the best. Yeah.

You do have to do the hard work of, uh, saying no.

-All right. Yeah.

-Okay, great. -I got you.

-Okay. -(CO-PILOT CHUCKLES)

was a method of rejection that left everyone happy.

It was fascinating to watch the different ways

these co-pilots would say no to people.

You're doing great, buddy.

Just keep focusing on the donut and not the hole.

That's what they always told me.

But I was curious to see which of these techniques

would make the singers feel the best.

Sorry, thanks for coming.

People are very good at hiding their true emotions.

That's why I didn't want to evaluate anything

by the singers' faces.

Hi, would you be willing to rate your judge?

Yeah. -Okay, thank you.

So, I put ballot boxes outside of each room

so after every rejection, the singers

could rate their co-pilot's likability

on a scale from one to ten.

-Thanks. Thanks.

-Have a good one. -You too.

me and my Canadian Idol colleagues would go

to a local bar to unwind.

I found that talking to people who were going

through the same thing as you helped me realize

that it wasn't so weird what I was doing.

So, I wanted this experience for the co-pilots too.

And it was important enough that I had the bar I owned

transported once again across state lines

and added to my Los Angeles set of the Houston Airport.

Well, that was fast. -Yeah, thanks a lot.

Awesome. -Oh, these people are gonna think I'm so mean, but...

It is. It is. -Yeah.

And, uh, she just started crying,

and I was like,

"Uh... I'm sorry."

-Did you have a crier? -I had one crier.

-Oh! Aw. I'm so sorry.

And I was like, "Oh no!"

But when I started going through the singers' ratings,

I was surprised by how likable they found

these co-pilots.

One co-pilot, a first officer from Southwest Airlines

named Mara'D,

had an average score of over nine,

which seems suspiciously high.

Thank you so much. I like your rendition.

-I like the change. Thank you.

I think for me, it's not quite the sound we're looking for today.

When I looked at her footage,

nothing she was doing seemed that notable to me.

I am going to pass today.

But people, for some reason, were leaving happy.

I was starting to wonder if these L.A. singers

were just a different breed

than the ones I used to reject back in Canada.

Maybe they were just so used to hearing no

that it didn't affect them.

So, I decided to sit in for a bit

It was cool to be back in the seat again.

I felt like I was in my element.

So, there... you know, there's a lot of, uh...

Like, I'm not gonna be able to put you through

to the next round, um, because there's a lot of,

you know, people coming in.

-Mm-hmm. Um...

So, sorry about that.

Sure, you're the judge.

I just put forth my best performance, so...

Okay, you did good. Thank you. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you.