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American Idol

American Idol is an American reality-competition show airing on Fox. It debuted on June 11, 2002, and it has since become the most popular show on American television. Part of the Idol franchise, it originated from the reality program Pop Idol created by British entertainment executive Simon Fuller, which was first aired in 2001 in the United Kingdom.

The program seeks to discover the best singer in the country through a series of nationwide auditions. The outcomes of the later stages of this competition are determined by public voting by phone. The format features three judges who give critiques of the contestants' performances in order to facilitate the voting: record producer Randy Jackson; pop singer and choreographer Paula Abdul; and record executive Simon Cowell. The show is hosted by former children's game show emcee and television personality Ryan Seacrest; comedian Brian Dunkleman cohosted with Seacrest in season one. The American Idol band is led by Rickey Minor. The show usually airs on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in the US and Thursday and Friday nights in the UK (two days after the US airing). In its six seasons, its six winners have been Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Hicks, and Jordin Sparks, respectively. The first five American Idols are from the Southern United States of America (U.S) and the sixth, Jordin Sparks, is from the Southwest. Hicks was the oldest winner at 29, Sparks the youngest at just 17.

Currently American Idol season 7 is televised on TVNZ in New Zealand, Fox in the United States, CTV in Canada, MNET Series in South Africa, FOX8 in Australia, ITV2 in the UK, Global TV in Indonesia, TV3 Ireland in Ireland, Star World in several parts of Asia and on QTV11 in the Philippines.

International

American Idol is broadcast to over 100 nations outside of the United States; however, these aren't live broadcasts and may be tape delayed by several days or weeks (excluding Canada, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates, where episodes are also aired live). In those instances, the shows are combined into one episode to summarise the results. Australia airs episodes just 5 hours after their US showing and the UK airs episodes 2 days after their US showing on digital channel ITV2. It is also aired in Ireland 2 days after the showing. In Brazil, the show airs 8 days after the showing in the United States.

The seventh season of American Idol is exclusively being broadcast direct to Australia via satellite on FOX8.

It also airs in Mexico in two markets in English -- Tijuana, Baja California and Matamoros, Tamaulipas -- because those markets have Fox affiliates that serve US markets. The Tijuana broadcast is a same-day broadcast, as it is located on the West Coast with its Fox affiliate XETV. The Matamoros broadcast is live, as it is in the Central time zone on XHRIO.

Theme park attraction

On February 7, 2008, The Walt Disney Company announced the development of a live attraction based on American Idol to be built at its Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. The show will be co-produced by 19 Entertainment. Set to open at the end of 2008, park guests will be able to audition and possibly perform in the live show. Winners will be selected by a combination of audience vote and input from a panel of judges, although the exact format has yet to be decided. Winners each day will have the chance to audition for the real TV series.[51]

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article American Idol.