American Idol 14 EP Teases a Female Idol Celebrity Mentor, and More.

AMERICAN IDOL XIV: L-R: Judges Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick, Jr., during the "Hollywood Round" of AMERICAN IDOL XIV airing Wednesday, Feb. 4 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. CR: Michael Becker / FOX. © 2014 FOX Broadcasting Co.

TVLine’s Michael Slezak got an opportunity to speak with American Idol executive producer Trish Kinane, and here are the main points you need to know: (Read more at TV Line)

  • The “Judges Save” will return.
  • There will be celebrity mentors including “one of our most famous Idols…and it’s a woman.”
  • The eliminations will not happen at the top of the show.  Kinane says they’ve got the process all figured out: “We’re not going to have the elimination at the top of the show because that’s really depressing. There’s a couple of ways of doing it; when [you get to the point in the season where] the kids do two songs each, around Top 6, we’ll be changing the method slightly because it’s not right to make somebody sing a song when you know they’re already out.”
  • On mentor Scott Borchetta: “Scott doesn’t want to screw this up. He wants to get a star at the end of this. He’s very ambitious. He loves the purity of the Idol process — taking raw kids and working with them and helping them develop. He’s passionate about that. He’s putting in huge amounts of time, much more than I was even expecting. “
  • Scott has been spending so much time with the kids, there aren’t enough hours in the show to feature all of it. Look for some of the footage to be posted online
  • Scott will live in Los Angeles for the entirety of the live show phase. He’s already talking to the kids about song choices for week 3.
  • Kinane says Idol has seen an uptick this year in teen viewers.
  • Idol vs The Voice: “The Voice is a good show. It’s a game show. It has that sort of angle to it, which makes it different. That’s why I think there’s room for both Idol and The Voice in the market. That’s about it, but there is room for that.” Pretty much sums up my opinion on the subject.
  • On authenticity and avoiding gimmicks: “Everything has to have authenticity. I don’t know if your readers have reacted… but we’re not putting the bad [singers] in front of the judges in the way we used to 14 years ago, just for a laugh. It was hilarious in the beginning, but that started to get a bit annoying to me. Still, it’s nice to have humor in the show.”  Kinane says they showed a few bad singers during the bits they did at the producers’ tables at the cattle calls because that would be the more natural place to do it. Kinane says, “it seems manipulative to let the [terrible singers] keep going and then put them in front of the judges.”

Who do you think this mystery female celebrity mentor is? Carrie Underwood is close to delivering a baby, so I doubt that it’s her. Kelly Clarkson has thrown her lot in with The Voice the past couple of years, but could she return home to mentor? Jennifer Hudson was almost a judge. Could she be coming back to mentor? What do you think?

About mj santilli 34858 Articles
Founder and editor of mjsbigblog.com, home of the awesomest fan community on the net. I love cheesy singing shows of all kinds, whether reality or scripted. I adore American Idol, but also love The Voice, Glee, X Factor and more!