To me the problem with Morning Musume is this:
There are many girls in the group now that don’t have any opportunity to shine. The only things left now are concerts, singles and photo books. With 2 singles a year not everybody will get attention, so management will focus on the prettier girls or the ones with the best voices. Some of these girls probably have awesome personalities, but we never experience those because they don’t have a TV/YouTube show of their own and they hardly ever take part in variety shows. A Sayumi or Konno that don’t have vocal talent but have other qualities are simply impossible now.
To me, that was always the most fun part about morning musume, to follow the development of these girls and watch them grow and polish whatever talent they have. But nowadays they audition and graduate without us having really experienced them. Haruna Ogata was the biggest example of this in my opinion, we didn’t even get to see much of her and then she was gone. The lack of new albums also adds to this problem, because albums at least have songs for the less vocally talented girls. I want to see more of Akane, Reina, Homare, Rio, but they have so few opportunities to shine. That’s a pity.
If there’s nothing left besides vocal talent, looks and dancing skills, then why don’t they simply focus on adding girls that have those? Just make Morning Musume a performance machine, just like many k-pop groups. Right now, they are floating.