'American Idol': It Begins

Kara DioGuardi: American Idol has a new judge, a few new rules, and undoubtedly a lot of renditions of the National Anthem. Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

It's that time again. You've heard the rumbling; you've sensed that somewhere, Stevie Wonder songs were being butchered. And now, it's that time.

American Idol returns for its eighth season tonight, and for the first time, the notorious juggernaut is a little on the defensive. Ratings slid last year — not that much, but enough to make people nervous — so, predictably, the show is rolling out a few changes.

The most well publicized is the arrival of Kara DioGuardi, the new fourth judge. Because she's a woman and Paula Abdul is a woman, there was early speculation that she might be part of a plan to phase out Abdul, whose behavior last year was startlingly odd at times. (There was, for example, that incident where she critiqued a performance that hadn't yet occurred.)

DioGuardi has been around a while as a songwriter and producer, working right in the Idol wheelhouse, not only with actual Idol alumni including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken, and Katharine McPhee, but with much of the sparkle-pink teen-pop genre that includes Hilary Duff, Vanessa Hudgens (of High School Musical), and even Jessica Simpson.

Presumably, she at least knows something about the production of the kind of music Idol participants aspire to make, for ... whatever that may be worth.

More about the new season, after the jump...

The show is also making some changes that actually are good ideas, including one fewer week of initial audition episodes — those are the ones where you get people who dress in cow costumes and shriek in purposefully ridiculous accents and really just want to get on television as bad auditioners. Since there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to bad singing, this is a good thing.

They'll also be showing a little more of Hollywood Week, which is when they cut the hundreds of folks who make it through their first auditions down to the ones who will actually be heavily featured on television. (I'm personally hoping this brings back the part where the contestants worked in small groups, which had a surprising tendency to separate wheat from chaff in a hurry; nothing makes a talented person look talented like appearing onstage with a bunch of yahoos who stayed out all night drinking.)

They're also changing the way singers advance through the early-middle section of the show, returning to the "wild card" model that, in early seasons, allowed the judges to nudge forward contestants who hadn't yet been discovered by the public.

Ultimately, while this kind of tinkering can improve the show incrementally, it's not going to convert non-viewers into viewers. Nobody is saying, "I've always thought American Idol represented the worst of our culture, but if they're extending Hollywood Week, then okay." If you're not on the train by now, you're not going to board because of Kara DioGuardi.

In the end, it's about keeping the faithful happy. Which is harder than you might think, because people who watch this show tend to have a very complicated relationship with it.

My dear pal Stephen Thompson of NPR Music made this point the other day, saying to me, "At 7:59, we're going to be really looking forward to having a new season to watch, and that's going to last until ... maybe 8:15."