‘America’s Got Talent’ and the great Golden Buzzer debate

Last night’s “America’s Got Talent” handed out its third golden buzzer of the season, and did so courtesy of Heidi Klum pressing it for singer Sal Valentinetti. We certainly understand the move, given that Sal’s got an incredible voice, but in addition to that, he may have more charisma than a hundred other singers on this show over time combined. No faulting that choice whatsoever.

However, we do want to point out what’s a little bit of a trend here with this show favorite vocalists with the golden buzzer. Sal joins opera singer Laura Bretan and young singer-songwriter Grace VanderWaal with this honor, and this without Simon Cowell even pressing his buzzer yet. In the early seasons of the show, our joke was that this was really “America’s Got Singers,” and unless you had a great set of pipes on you, there was a zero percent chance you were going to win. That’s not the case anymore, but are the judges favoring singers to much?

We really can’t sit here and say whether or not Mel or Howie should have pressed for someone like Laura or Grace, mostly because we weren’t there for that particular moment while it was happening. The judges don’t have the foresight of knowing that there is a great magician or juggler or dance group coming up down the road, and it is easy for the crowd to have a quick, obvious reaction to a singer when their voice fills up the room. Sometimes, these are just pressed without much thought for anything else, including how many other singers have already been given them.

Now that we’ve said all of this … can Simon Cowell give his to someone who’s not a singer? We know he’s capable of it, since in Britain he gave it to dancing Stormtrooper group Boogie Storm.

If you missed our full review of last night’s new “America’s Got Talent” episode, be sure to head over to the link here. Also, sign up over at this link to secure some other TV news on all we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)