I could not give a toss about Simon Cowell, TV talent shows or the mindless repetition of corporate music. You cannot force your idea of art on the mindless masses who watch and listen to this crap. None of them have a gun to their heads - they could all switch off their TV sets and seek out quality stuff. But they don't. So who cares? It's not the responsibility of me, the government, corporations or anyone else to improve the cultural outlook of these people. Once you start getting into that area, it just opens up a whole new can of worms and begs the questions "what is art" and "why is art A of higher intellectual value than art B." All you can do is your best to influence those around you on a personal level. But there will always be a huge number of people who have absolutely no appreciation for the finer things in life and who will just lap up whatever banal crap that's put in front of them. I learned to stop worrying about such people a long time ago. As for American Idol and all of that ballyhoo, well I don't have a TV and have no intention of getting one and so I'm pretty much blind to it. However I do enjoy watching the bad auditions on YouTube, that's an entertainment in itself.
Of course you have a point but if talented, professional artists cannot get people to open their wallets (an assuming some middle man isn't getting all the dough) then none of it matters. I recently read, it may have been here, that the average professional musician makes $32,000.00 a year. If they have a family, or if they don't... they are going to have to have a second job to have any sort of decent lifestyle... but considering the rigors of life involved with being a working musician, they don't have the time or energy for anything else.
Someone somewhere has to figure out a way to stop people from stealing the fruit of their labor. I don't know the answer but I do know if it is not profitable, people are not going to keep at it, least not the way people have traditionally done. They can't afford to. They lose and we lose.