Idol Chatter & Voice Views

If you haven’t heard, Nigel Lythgoe did an interview with The Associated Press last week in which he said not much would change this year on American Idol.

It’s easy to read both good and bad into that statement.

Bad:  We’re stuck with the same judging panel of Steven Tyler, who never saw a finals performance he didn’t like; Jennifer Lopez, who was nearly as bad in her ability to gush over everything; and Randy Jackson, who became more of an “in-it-to-win-it” joke than the judging panel leader Nigel envisioned at the beginning of Season 10.

Bad:  We’re apparently stuck with the same voting system, with no limits on the number of votes fanatical fans can cast for the latest cute guy to catch their eye.  The fact that girls finished second and third on Idol Season 10 doesn’t change the fact that the voting system is blatantly unfair to females.

The most telling facts:  Four straight male winners.  Four of the first five contestants eliminated in Season 9 were ladies.  The first five contestants eliminated in Season 10 were gals.  Will a female ever win Idol again?  Not under this voting system.  Not if Crystal Bowersox couldn’t beat Lee DeWyze in Season 9.

Good: We shouldn’t see a return to those horrible theme nights of the past, when Idols were forced to sing Big Band music, or Frank Sinatra tunes, or disco, regardless of their style of music and regardless of whether they had any chance of pulling it off.

Honestly, those themes were sometimes mind-boggling.  Why in the world would a show take talented singers and put them into a scenario where you’d expect a train wreck of a performance?  The themes were much broader in Season 10 and will apparently stay that way.

Good:  During the interview, Nigel praised the diversity of the Season 10 cast. And he said this: “The kids that have auditioned this year that we’re going to be taking to Hollywood … are again really talented and really diverse.”

Now that should be music to the ears of Idol followers, because the secret to the success of Season 10 wasn’t Nigel, the judges or format tweaks — the success was completely due to the talent and the diversity of talent among the finalists.

All that said, we’ll wait until the season starts to make any real judgments.

A year ago, Nigel was telling us Season 10 results shows would be shortened to one-half hour.

Hmm, that never happened, did it?