Paula Abdul AWOL From 'Idol' Panel

"He had an eye infection as well?" joked Jackson.

"No, no, he wasn't accused of anything -- he didn't get an eye infection," the critic said.

After the Q&A session, both exec producers told The TV Column that they did not know Abdul would miss the Q&A session until just before the critics were told.

We asked Warwick if he had learned what happened to Abdul's eye. "She left it under the grill too long," he cracked.

"I arrived expecting to see her and was told by a publicist she would not be here," he said.

Abdul's absence became a sort of leitmotif of Fox's day at the press tour. During the Q&A session for action drama "24," one critic noted that a cast member was missing from the stage and wondered whether that actor's character had been killed off or whether actor just had an "eye infection." Everyone tittered.

Earlier there had been some speculation in the back of the ballroom as to whether what Abdul had meant was that she had an "I" infection.

Though not at the "Idol" Q&A in body, Abdul was there in spirit.

Right before the panelists took questions, Fox ran a promo with clips from the audition portion of this season's competition. One clip, of an alarmingly Corey Clarkish guy singing "You raise me up so I can stand on a mountain" from Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up," cut to Abdul gushing about how his mediocre performance had blown her away.

Did they learn nothing last season? Last season, you'll recall, ABC News scored boffo ratings during the sweeps when Corey Clark told correspondent John Quinones that Abdul had shagged him, coached him and given him a makeover while he was a contestant in the singing competition.

Abdul, who'd already spent the previous "Idol" season living down rumors she was stoned on the show (she said a manicure mishap led to a serious finger infection), denied Clark's claims. But the story had gotten so big that Fox had to launch an investigation -- which concluded there was no concrete evidence she'd done anything wrong. Judging by critics' questions, they're not really buying it.

"As far as I can tell, the conclusion of the investigation is that since no one actually saw her having sex with anybody, everything is okay," one said during Liguori's session.