Fox Insist That Idol Is Staying

American Idol is safe

Fox are adamant that the September launch of Simon Cowell’s new project, X Factor USA, will not affect their long-standing, but similar series American Idol.

Idol is gearing up for it’s 10th season, beginning next week on 19th January, but it is going to be the first time that the show goes ahead without show guru and key judge, Simon Cowell, on the panel. With Kara DioGuardi and Ellen DeGeneres also stepping down, the panel for 2011 has a fresher look, with series regular Randy Jackson joined by Jennifer Lopez and Aerosmith frontman Steve Tyler.

Fox entertainment chief, Kevin Reilly believes that this new look for Idol will not affect its popularity, and that both shows will be popular on the network due to their key differences to what seems from the outset as near-identical formats, which he hopes that viewers will be able to notice easily (such as the ‘mentor’ feature in X Factor, or the age 15-28 soloist limitation on Idol).

He said of the singing competitions: “It has its own different energy; a lot of the mechanics are similar but the mentoring aspect is so major, the spectacle nature of it, the production of it feels very different. The rest of it is for the audience to decide but in a perfect world I’d like to see the competition between the two shows.”

He also mentioned Simon Cowell, who left Idol in order to work on the new American version of his British hit: “Simon is Simon, but he fulfills a different role; he is a mentor, not a critic. And that mentoring role, and that investment gives (people) a different version of him.”

Chairman of the Fox Networks Group, Peter Rice was also trying to sell the differences of the shows, adding: “It’s actually very different from Idol. It’s a different feeling, a different experience. You’ll see the infectious nature of X Factor… It’s completely different.”

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