Is the thrill gone?

Tonight, Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis compete for the title of sixth-season "American Idol" winner, the glory of performing a treacly ballad amid a shower of confetti Wednesday night. The victor will get bragging rights for life and a picture in the background of next year's opening credits.

Oh, and an automatic contract with 19 Entertainment, the "Idol" producer that is a recording/management/merchandising juggernaut. But ask Chris Daughtry how much that matters.

Daughtry, of course, is last season's fourth-place finisher, an early frontrunner whose exit was billed by many fans as a crime against humanity. He signed his own contract with 19 Entertainment -- which reserves the right to sign any "Idol" contestant -- and he now has the top-selling album of the season five contenders, vastly outpacing last year's winner, Taylor Hicks . And he's a symbol of the challenge "Idol" faces as it reaches TV maturity.

If anything has caused the much-trumpeted "Idol" ratings erosion this year -- and "erode" is a relative term, since the show still draws more than 25 million viewers every week -- it isn't the familiar complaints about poor singing and tepid song choices. (Yes, Barry Gibb week was disastrous. But the Sanjaya Malakar-Melinda Doolittle dichotomy is proof that bad can be far more entertaining than good.)

No, the trouble is that "Idol" has aged into its own time-worn routine, a tame roller-coaster of make-believe shocks and make-believe victories, and the audience understands the stakes completely. At this stage, there are no stakes. Nearly everybody wins. And the voting public is less important than ever.

Imagine if tomorrow's show were a referendum on the future of "Idol" -- a Malakar-Doolittle battle, for instance, that called into question the influence producers had over the voting. Imagine if national week-to-week whims could actually determine the fate of a career.

Instead, tomorrow's finale features two solid performers who speak to completely different audiences. It will be a test of which established "Idol" voting blocs -- the fans of heartthrob boys or diva - esque voices -- will dial and text with the most tenacity. And it won't necessarily have much effect on record sales. Especially since record contracts are starting to look inevitable; eight of last year's finalists have signed them.

In the days before "Idol" was a proven commodity, a recording contract itself looked like a giant prize. And given the trying times for the music industry, it still is; the 677,000 units Hicks has sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan , are nothing to sneeze at. They just pale in comparison to Daughtry's 2 million.

By now it's clear that the show is about the elevator ride, represented visually in the opening credits. It's the journey from obscurity to instant fame, the understanding that, in a saturated media landscape, having name recognition is half the battle -- and the whole entertainment industry is ready to capitalize. Within a day of leaving "American Idol" last year, eight h -place finisher Bucky Covington was approached by Mark Miller , the frontman for the country band Sawyer Brown . Before long he had been signed to Lyric Street Records , the country-music division of Disney , which also signed second-season "Idol" finalist Josh Gracin. Covington's debut album, released last month, is now on the Billboard Top 10 country charts.

Yes, record sales vary widely among the "Idol" winners. First-season winner Kelly Clarkson's sophomore hit, "Breakaway," has sold 5 million copies and spent more than two years on the Billboard charts. Fourth-season winner Carrie Underwood's debut, "Some Hearts," tops the Billboard country albums, and has sold 6 million copies. Fifth-season runner-up Katharine McPhee's self-titled debut is hovering at 322,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Katie Hasty , the associate editor of Billboard.com , is stumped by Hicks' s relative lack of success: "Maybe it just wasn't the time for a record from him." But she notes that "Idol" voting doesn't always jibe with trends in the music industry. Young people who vote prodigiously on "Idol" are more likely to download singles than buy entire albums. The show's vast Midwestern audience, conservative and older, might not take to certain genres.

But while those sales are one indicator of success, today's "Idol" contestants can ride their fame well past a lackluster performance on the charts. Fantasia , the season- three winner, is currently starring in a Broadway production of "The Color Purple," but her runner-up, Diana DeGarmo , had already appeared in the Broadway version of "Hairspray." Lisa Tucker, last year's 10th-place finisher, has been cast in a Fox pilot. Season four's Constantine Maroulis, just off a run on Broadway's "The Wedding Singer," picked up a role on "The Bold and the Beautiful." Of course, season three's Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar this year for her role in "Dreamgirls." And if you think Malakar doesn't have an entertainment future ahead of him, you've probably been sniffing too much hairspray.

As a showcase of dubious talent -- and a medium for playing the horse - race game -- "Idol" remains unparallel ed. And as a spectacle, this week's finale will likely deliver the earnest medleys, the star-studded duets, the sight of celebrities crying in the crowd. And yes, tens of millions of people will vote. But at this point, it won't mean much at all.