The 'real' audition process?

The East Carolinian - ECU student on "American Idol"

Here's the detailed audition experience of one contestant form Chicago who made it to Hollywood. Probably some info here that producers may not want known so if the link doesn't work that means the article was removed. And I'll warn you it's looooong. (But hey, if you're here reading my blog then you've come to expect that!)

Some basics: 15,000 people were broken into 4-person groups to sing for the 1st-level producers. 300 Advanced. Next they sing for (exec. producers) Nigel & Ken. She says about 100 advanced to Simon/Paula/Randy (which was actually a couple days later) and most of the others were not just bad, but tv-showcased-delusional bad. So a lot of the people you see in audition shows were picked by the producers & never saw S/P/R.

I already knew most of that. But she also claims Ken & Nigel chose (at least some of) the top 24 before they got to S/P/R. I did hear that they were the ones that told Taylor to play up his affectations for S/P/R, so that fits.

She also explains the one clip of screentime she got - she was the one saying they could put the Idol logo over her mouth - was hours after she was booted and all done in jest, joking around about what makes good tv. Heh.