I was flipping channels last week when I came upon ABC’s “Making the Band,” the behind-the-scenes documentary of the creation of the next big boy band, O-Town.

“Making the Band” is a bona fide television vortex — a show that I never set out to watch and even try to avoid, but once it’s on I’m powerless to change the channel because it’s such mind candy.

This was the episode where they made the final cut from eight to five. The show was chock full of conversations about their feelings and how they would all still be friends after the cut. My roommate said it best when he said, “these guys behave exactly like the stupidest 15-year-old girls I ever met.”

The guys on “Making the Band” are the most self-absorbed, whiny idiots around. Then they started singing. Ouch!

I started thinking that teen idols weren’t always so annoying. The problem with teen idols today is that they aren’t nearly as likable, have absolutely no perspective and they are less talented than those in the past.

All teen idols really have to do is be good looking and personable. After watching “Making the Band” I can safely say that the prospect of having to talk to those people makes me cringe.

When they’re not psychoanalyzing themselves and others, they are talking about how talented they are. It’s like they’re on a quest to see how shallow and transparent they can be.

In a recent interview in Rolling Stone, Christina Aguilera complained that the Backstreet Boys swear in interviews and frequent strip clubs and the media doesn’t mention it, but if she does anything like that (she once went to a strip club with them), she gets in trouble.

First of all, the Backstreet Boys are supposed to be wholesome entertainment for young girls. They could at least behave themselves. Secondly, while the media double standard is pretty rotten, if you set out to be a pop star you shouldn’t complain about it when you get there.

The main reason they are so unlikable is that they are not grounded in reality at all. A lot of the teen idols in the 1950s and 1960s actually wrote their own material or played instruments.

Elvis was the first big star who got marketed to teens. He could sing, play the guitar and dance in a way that most people hadn’t seen before. Elvis was a pretty humble guy in the early days. He realized that he was the safe, white version of what unknown black performers had been doing for years. He would even tell people that in interviews. Ozzy Osbourne’s neighbor Pat Boone is about as wholesome as they come. Although he’s pretty lame, he can sing quite well and his squeaky clean image is not an act.

The Beatles and the Beach Boys were both teen groups before they got their act together and released “Rubber Soul” and “Pet Sounds.”

The idols that were produced by record labels didn’t have the delusions of grandeur that they do today.

A person in the late ’50s and ’60s who was approached by a record label would more likely have the attitude “you want me to travel around the country getting screamed at by girls and pay me for it?” Today the attitude is more along the lines of “I’m famous because I possess superior talent to all those around me.”

The late ’50s teen idol Fabian is a good example of this. After Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell were discovered on the south side of Philadelphia, Bob Marucci and Peter DeAngelis went in search of the next star in their neighborhood.

It turned out that Fabian lived in the same neighborhood as Avalon, and they had attended the same high school. Fabian’s dad had just suffered a massive heart attack that rendered him unable to work.

When the two came and asked him if he wanted to be a rock star he asked them if it paid well, they gave him a pompadour and a v-neck sweater and off he went. After his first recording session they quickly enrolled him in vocal training, finding out why he didn’t make the Glee Club in high school.

His first two appearances on American Bandstand he didn’t sing, and on his third he finally lip synced the song “I’m a Man.” They then marketed him as a “dangerous date” and his next song “Tiger” proved to be his only gold record.

Even though Fabian wasn’t the world’s greatest singer, he at least had to be passable. Today’s music engineers can make anyone sound good.

The Monkees, assembled by NBC, learned to play instruments before they went out on tour, a fact they are still very proud of.

While their TV show was kind of stupid, they ran around having fun doing silly things making them hard to hate. They were in the 1968 film “HEAD,” which featured revolutionary visual effects. It was co-written by the not-yet-famous Jack Nicholson. To this day, the Monkees aren’t sure what the movie was about.

By contrast, I was watching N’Sync on MTV and a girl in the audience asked them what has been the most creative thing they’ve done as a band.

They were very puzzled by the question and had to have it repeated. Their answer was that once they did a show at a dude ranch or that they all got together and watched “That Thing You Do.”

Watch any Britney Spears interview, and she’ll say the word “talent” at least five times. If she ever releases a groundbreaking album that she wrote or engineered, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

There’s nothing wrong with music that caters to the teen demographic or stars who are made by record companies, but it seems that today, these stars actually believe they are musical geniuses and not just out having fun and making money.

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Erik Hoversten is a senior in math from Eagan, Minn.