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Exercise in Futility: American Idol's Search for Simon Cowell Replacement

By Catharine Taylor

Updated on: August 2, 2010 / 12:19 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Will Harry Connick, Jr. be one of the new judges on American Idol? What about Jennifer Lopez now that Ellen DeGeneres has left the building? Is Aerosmith's Steven Tyler the new Simon Cowell? Or is it P. Diddy? And has Kara DioGuardi really been fired?

Who cares? You may think I'm asking that rhetorical question because in a world full of oil spills and out-of-control wildfires, obsessing over who gets to sit at the judges' table on American Idol seems a little silly. But, no. I'm asking it because no matter who American Idol finds to judge -- Fox could name replacements as soon as today -- the show is effectively over. The only thing left to do is milk what's left of it until the show's producers throw in the towel -- an event that is two or three years off, max, unless Cowell ever returns to the show, which he'd probably do over his dead body.

As far as American Idol is concerned, Fox is between a rock and a hard place. It certainly wouldn't be wise to kill the show yet -- still one of network TV's most popular, even as its ratings wane. Replacing the entire show and hoping for another mega-hit, especially considering how much viewership of network TV has declined in the nine years since the show's debut, doesn't make sense. Nor is it possible to resurrect it without Simon Cowell.

Last year's Ellen DeGeneres experiment proves the point. As host of her own, popular syndicated talk show, DeGeneres is arguably a more popular celebrity than Abdul, but did it keep ratings from sliding? No.
Which is why there is so much flailing about by the show when it comes to the central question of who will replace Simon Cowell. The show's producers are trying to answer an unanswerable question, because there is no replacement for the acerbic, cold heart of the show. What viewers want is what they can't have: and that's American Idol, same as it ever was.

So, what happens from here? A huge post-Cowell decline in ratings this year, with a slow, steady decline -- and annual rethinking of the show's judges -- thereafter. When the ratings reach the point of no return -- which in TV means when Fox is better off killing it and trying something else -- American Idol will fade into black.