Michelle Rivera

With Simon Cowell’s departure from American Idol many people wondered if the show could go on without him?  However, in showbiz, “the show must go on,” especially when the show makes billions of dollars in revenue.  Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, you did just read BILLIONS, not millions of dollars, that American Idol has made….And yes there is an “s” at the end of that word (“Billion”) as well.

Now the most recent stats that I could find in regards to American Idol’s money making machine is from an article entitled, ‘Idol Riches,’ which was in Portfolio.com in April of 2009.  It was also an article that the L.A. Times referenced to.  This article was written after the completion of eight years of American Idol and the dinero was broken down into something like this:  Overall TV Revenue was at $6.4 billion dollars, summer tours were estimated at $30 million dollars a year, CD and music sales were at $600 million, license deals were at $400 million and spin-offs, these are shows that basically copied American Idol’s concept was at $715 million dollars.

So let’s just think about this for a minute, these stats were after eight years of American Idol.  Therefore, can you imagine how much money American Idol has made by now?  Let’s just say that everyone behind A.I. (Fremantle Media and FOX) was not about to give up this show just because the bitchy Brit who everyone loved to hate left it.  No way!  Instead of taking their success and billions of dollars and retiring the show in all its glory, they decided to revamp it, like any other self respecting, money hungry production company and TV network would do.  C’mon let’s be real, as real as we can be anyway when in regards to talking about show business.  This industry is about making money, just like any other industry, and that’s the bottom line, well at least that’s the bottom line for them.  However, maybe that’s not the bottom line for you, the fans of American Idol.

Many fans have said that the essence of American Idol (a.k.a the biting, smug, blunt honesty that is Simon Cowell’s judging style) is what sets it apart from other TV talent shows.  Many fans believe that absolutely no judge will be able to take his place and that the show just won’t be as good without him.  So of course this all leads to my question, “Has American Idol jumped the shark by going on without Simon?”  I guess we will find out when the season comes to an end and we can compare the ratings to other seasons.

However, there is one thing that is for sure with the premiere of the new season of American Idol, it looks like the two new judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler are definitely more on the sugary sweet side that was Paula Abdul, rather than on the biting side that was Simon Cowell.  Some people might find this refreshing, while die hard fans might find this to be boring.

I did watch the show tonight and I was pleasantly surprised at how likeable all the judges were and how well their chemistry seemed to work together.  Unfortunately, there was nobody on the judging panel to hate and not really any cunning remarks to laugh at, like in the good ole’ Simon days of American Idol.  There was also really no Good Cop, Bad Cop, which led to less controversy on the judging table.  As a matter of fact, the judging table was pretty soft in my opinion and Randy came off to be the toughest judge of all three of them.  I know, Randy is the nice one though! Exactly my point, they’re all nice this year.

I did tweet the question of what everyone thought of the American Idol premiere tonight and here are some of the responses I received:

American Idol Then

American Idol Now