'American Idol' makes it official

September 17th, 2012, 8:47 am ·

· posted by The Watcher

Despite all of our hopes that this was a bad joke, that "American Idol" really wasn't expanding to four judges again and keeping Randy Jackson to boot, but it's all true.

Fox formally announced Sunday what everyone had been saying since last week: The "AI" judging panel for season 12 will consist of Randy, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban.

I guess it was inevitable. "The Voice" and "The X Factor" and even "The Next" all have four judges, and there is no way "American Idol" was going to be outdone by those pretenders. The Watcher is a little surprised they didn't go to five judges. Of course, the producers seem to have short memories, having forgotten that "AI" had four judges for several seasons and it was a disaster, prompting them to cut back to three judges for seasons 10 and 11.

But when your ratings are going downhill faster than Bullwinkle in a snowball, there is no such thing as a bad idea.

The new judges actually make sense. Mariah, Nicki and Keith are three megastars with very different audiences. Mariah brings the older pop crowd; Nicki is the It Girl of the moment; Keith fetches the underserved country fans and provides a counterweight to the "The Voice" and Blake Shelton. Whether they can judge or not - and we're pretty sure Mariah cannot - is almost beside the point.

But why bring back Randy, the dullest man on network television, just to add a useless fourth judge? We're still trying to figure that one out.

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