By Lisa de Moraes
Friday, August 7, 2009
PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 6
"Hey! We're the victims here!" Fox suits said, putting on their sad faces at Summer TV Press Tour 2009, about 36 hours after Paula Abdul tweeted that she was exiting "American Idol."
"It's something that's very saddening to us," Fox's new entertainment chairman, Peter Rice, told critics, sitting up onstage looking as cool as a turbot on ice.
"Paula has decided not to return -- it was not our decision. . . . We very much wanted her to return. We made an offer we feel is very fair to Paula -- it was a substantial raise on the money she's made in the past," added Rice, looking like a turbot on ice who's been wronged by a middle-aged pop star.
Paula was a very important part of the show, said Rice, who acknowledged that there will be a "different dynamic" among the other judges and Paula's replacement.
"There's also something very exciting about that," Rice continued -- a hard line to deliver with a sad face.
Oh, and Fox Entertainment Group President Kevin Reilly, who was onstage with Rice, said replacing Paula will be like replacing Walter Cronkite -- looking like a turbot on ice whose publicist has just had an anxiety attack.
In the short term, the network and producers are focused on finding female pop stars to play Paula during "Idol" auditions, which begin Friday in Denver.
"It's our intention to have guest judges at each one of these auditions," Rice said.
Bouncy popster Katy Perry and mannequin Victoria Beckham have been signed to fill in for one week each. More names will come soon. But celebrity guest judges are not the permanent solution to the show's sudden lack of Paula-ness.
"There is . . . no expectation that any of these [celebrity guest judges] will be a long-term judge for us," said Rice, shooting down the Posh Spice report.
"All of the people we are talking to have successful careers and I don't think they would even be available."
The show has until January, when "Idol" returns to Fox's schedule, to find a permanent replacement for Paula, Rice said.
Unfortunately for Rice, his Q&A session came right after the Q&A for Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance?" (which Thursday night named perky teen Jeanine Mason as America's favorite dancer -- at least for the next few weeks, until the next round of "Dance" begins).
The dance competition is produced by the same company that does "Idol" and is hosted and exec-produced by former "Idol" exec producer Nigel Lythgoe. Lythgoe told critics he's waiting to see whether Paula's really out on "Idol" before discussing any future plans with her, including the idea of her guest-judging "Dance" for a week.
"I still don't know that she's going to leave 'Idol,' " he told critics. "I know this is going on -- the tweeting and the official statement and everything. But until 'Idol' goes on the air [in January], there's always opportunities for renegotiations. Who knows what might happen?" he said.
So, naturally, critics asked the network suits whether talks with Abdul were really most sincerely dead or whether, as some celebrity-stalking sites have suggested, this might turn out to have all been a horrible dream and Paula will sack her latest agent, make a beeline for "Idol" offices and collapse into the open arms of producer Ken Warwick.
"Our understanding is . . . we have concluded the negotiations and Paula has announced she's not coming back," Rice answered.
Asked afterward whether the network would be open to talking some more if Paula sought to reopen negotiations, Rice replied, "I have no expectation that Paula's going to do that, and in terms of the negotiations themselves, the negotiations have been concluded." But it was a yes/no question.
Asked, after that, whether the offer to Paula was still on the table or had it been withdrawn -- another yes/no question -- Fox Networks Group Chairman Tony Vinciquerra answered: "We're moving on -- we don't know what will happen, but we're moving on."
Sigh.
Tuesday night, Paula tweeted that she wasn't coming back to the show, sending Fox suits and show producers scrambling into the night to issue their collective we're-sad-she's-toast statement. The offer that Fox put on the table had been an eight-figure deal that would have increased her current salary by 30 percent, according to someone familiar with the talks who did not want to be identified because Paula fans are hopping mad.
Interestingly, though, the show got by nicely with just three judges for seven seasons and recently announced that last season's fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi, is returning. But the network feels an urgent need to find another judge to replace Paula -- someone, Rice said, who will have great chemistry with Simon Cowell [a.k.a. the only judge worth listening to] as well as Randy Jackson.
It's a "possibility" the show might go back to three judges, but "the probability is we will have four," Rice added.
That would seem to be a ringing non-endorsement for DioGuardi.
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