American Idol Returns With New Confidence

American Idol Returns With New Confidence

ON A THURSDAY IN JANUARY AT Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, an amateur singer has just nailed his audition. Singing “Maybe This Time”—the heartfelt number from Cabaret made famous by Liza Minnelli—a somewhat timid young man blasted through each note, and conjured up from nowhere a sense of yearning and desperation.

The three judges who hold the keys to his fate—pop star Katy Perry, country singer Luke Bryan and R&B legend Lionel Richie— are uncharacteristically exuberant. They’ve been largely quiet on this last day of “Hollywood Week,” trying to decide who will make the final slate of competitors, but now they burst into applause. Perry is moved to strip off her jacket and toss her chair from the judges’ dais into the crowd. Like the best moments from this show’s history, it’s both real and artificial. Moments later, once our aspiring star has walked offstage, a stagehand gingerly passes Perry her chair back.

Welcome to the new, kinder, cuddlierAmerican Idol. After a two-year absence, the show returns to prime time on ABC on March 11. The network hopes that it will do some version of what its first iteration did on Fox.Idol 1.0 was the nation’s defining reality-TV sensation, a show so popular at its height that other networks barely programmed against it. It generated A-list singers like Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson and Adam Lambert, and made a household name of Simon Cowell, the brusque British record executive who cheerfully shattered auditioners’ dreams.