Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Paula Abdul returns to a judge’s chair tonight on her new show, “Live to Dance,” which debuts at 8 p.m. on CBS.

The first episode will feature dancers auditioning for a chance to compete on the show in front of Paula and two other judges, choreographer Travis Payne and Kimberly Wyatt, a former member of the Pussycat Dolls.

Sound familiar?

This might sound familiar too. After tonight, the regular time slot for “Live to Dance” will be 8 p.m. Wednesday.

That places it head-to-head with American Idol.

Except “Live to Dance” will have a two-week head start.

There’s lot of speculation on whether Paula will remain the nice judge, whether “Dance” will be the breakout hit CBS is looking for and whether she’ll be as goofy as she was on Idol. For the record, she says she’s never been drunk.

My advice to Paula: Be goofy, very goofy, for the next two weeks.

She’d better get people talking.

Otherwise “Live to Dance” will go down as just another TV dance competition (really, don’t we have enough already?) and viewers will leave in droves to check out Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler as the new judges on Idol.

And to see whether Tyler really can out-ditz Paula and bring the unexpected back to Idol.