Tonight's the night: KC shines on "American Idol"

This should be fun: The auditions taped last year at the Sprint Center in Kansas City -- home to last season's "American Idol" champ David Cook -- are tonight's feature as "American Idol" enters day two at 7 p.m. on Fox 4.

Tim Finn adds: The auditions in August were at Kemper Arena, not Sprint. Tonight's show airs the second set of KC auditions, which were at the Firestone building in October - among the people who survived the Kemper Arena cattle call.

There was a panel on Tuesday to hype "Idol" here at press tour. Paula was there as was her galpal Kara, the new judge on the show (apparently, the two go way back). Kara was smart and gave decent enough quotes, but she really didn't say anything that wasn't perfectly obvious if you watched last night: namely, the two women have formed a tandem that can effectively equalize, if not neutralize, the overbearing excesses of Simon. You can't stop Simon -- he still got Bikini Girl waved through -- you can only hope to contain him, and to that extent adding a second female judge was probably a good move.

After, I buttonholed show producer Ken Warwick for a few minutes about whether he was deliberately dialing down the Sanjaya factor this season. Eventually he said uncle, I mean yes, but it was kind of an ordeal. So instead of torturing you with that audio, I'm encouraging you to follow this link to Ramsey Mohsen's excellent blogging of the Sprint Center KC tryouts.

Comments

[Mark Jeffries]

As I understand it, if there's a 2-2 tie, Simon's the tiebreaker, so he'll always have the last word. The original "Pop Idol" had four judges and Simon was the tiebreaker there, as well.

[Kemper Fan]

You're welcome, Tim.

[Kerry]

I had no idea they came to Kansas City! Ramsey does a pretty good job covering the auditions. Looks like it was crazy there. I wonder why it wasn't at the Sprint Center?

[Kemper Fan]

They liked the layout (and the parking!!!!) at Kemper more. AEG did their best to keep it away from Kemper but AI won!

[KCIDOLFAN]

KC Idol came to Kansas City two or three times and each time it was months apart from each other. On the show it looked like they were here on two consecutive days. In reality, they had folks dress with the exact same clothes they wore on the first day - a month later when Idol returned. On the show they showed footage of those who tried out at Kemper Arena. However, when they came back to Kansas City they were somewhere close to Soutwest Blvd. Many bad singers are told they sound great by many producers just to get blind sided by the "judges". Some of these folks came from Nebraska and other surrounding states and I can only imagine the cost they went through just to be laughed at in the end... and then appear shocked. But, that is hollywood for ya. That is why that nearly every singer they showed - good or bad - had a story to tell.
Most should also understand that they know who is going to Hollywood long before anyone ever gets in front of Randy, Paula and Simon.