Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Apparently, we’ll have to wait at least one more week to see how new American Idol judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez handle the pressure and time constraints of live TV.

Idol is pre-taping this week’s performance show, the first of the Season 10 finals.

That has led to speculation about manipulation of the program by Idol viewers.

Heck, I wondered about shenanigans myself after hearing that last week’s show was pre-taped and that Idol planned to air Jovany Barreto’s second performance of his semifinal song.

Nigel Lythgoe’s response to such speculation: “We are pre-taping for 2 weeks as we have a new Director & new judges. It has nothing to do with manipulation you morons.”

That message comes via Twitter, where Nigel goes as “dizzyfeet.” If you use Twitter and haven’t followed him yet, you should. He’s pretty chatty considering he’s an executive director on a program known for secrecy and last-minute surprises.

Anyway, we’re in for another pre-taped show. Nigel doesn’t specify whether the “two weeks” in his tweet refers to this week and the pre-taped semifinal show or the first two weeks of the finals.

Meanwhile, Idols’ final 13 are tweeting away — except for Haley Reinhart, who’s either strangely silent or Twitter-challenged.

Not that they’re giving up any of those secrets. Like what they’ll be singing Wednesday night.

Looks like we’re in for another year of Ford videos. Several contestants tweeted Sunday about this week’s video shoot.

And you know those shortened results shows Nigel promised last summer.

Won’t happen. Thursday’s show is scheduled to last an hour and include performances by Diddy Dirty Money and Adam Lambert (more on Adam’s performance here).

Plus … ready, set, grown … a group performance from the Season 10 Idols.

Oh, yes, they’ve been rehearsing. They’ve tweeted about that, too.

And for those who care about such things, Scotty McCreery still led in Twitter followers as of 2 p.m. EST Monday with about 13,675.

That’s a substantial lead over Paul McDonald, who’s in second place with nearly 11,950. Also cracking the 10,000 mark is Casey Abrams with 10,169.

Rounding out the top 13: 4) Lauren Alaina with 9,850; 5)  Thia Megia with 9,425; 6) James Durbin with 8,750; 7) Stefano Langone with 8,110; 8 — Pia Tascano with 7,825; 9) Jacob lusk with 5,875; 10) Karen Rodriguez with 4,950; 11) Haley Reinhart with 4,750; 12) Naima Adedapo with 4,425; 13) Ashthon Jones with 3,700.

The numbers are rounding, and change pretty quickly, of course.