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Today as I was at a coffee shop, I noticed the front page of the USA Today.  The front page advertised an article on the upcoming fourth season of American Idol.  The front page teaser mentioned that there will be a few changes to this year's Idol.

My favorite change that was mentioned was that the age limit would be raised.  I am all for that!  Maybe we'll get more George Huffs and fewer John Stevenses this year.  Anyway, it seems that the older performers are better suited to handle the pressure of the competition.

Another interesting change was no guest judges in the "final twelve" round.  That'll be good.  The guests (outside of Tarantino) weren't comfortable with offering criticism to the performers.  It makes the guests look bad: by not wanting to offend anyone, guest judges have to offer dubious praise to poor performances.

I hear that the "32 out of Hollywood" will be trimmed to 24, and that men and women will perform on seperate days.  The audience voting will also work to eliminate the bottom two, rather than promoting the top two from each week.  (This system would have probably saved Suzy Vulaca last year, so its probably a good thing.)

The article mentioned that the middle round usually exhibits a bit of a ratings-drop, thus the number of contestants was cut to 24.  I was a bit surprised by this, as the middle round (after Hollywood and before the theater) is my favorite.  My biggest hope is that they get rid of the studio audience for this part of the competition.  I didn't like the change in atmosphere for that round from last year!

So we have a little over two weeks to go before the start of  Idol's fourth season.  I can hardly wait!