The confetti has been swept up, the tiara placed on the head of winner Candice Glover and hope once again restored that "American Idol" might have found its next Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson.
Now for the hard work. Let's face it: Season 12 was a bit of a mess. The talent was lackluster, the attempt by producers to guarantee the first female winner in six seasons was obvious and the uncomfortable tension between high-priced judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj often made the show hard to watch.
The "Idol" brain trust has now tried an all-star judge reboot twice, and, clearly, that's not the answer. We know original Dawg Randy Jackson is gone, and it seems likely that Nicki, Mariah and Keith Urban won't be back either. And the Justin Bieber/ Diddy/ Selena Gomez rumor just seems silly.
So how does "Idol" reverse course before season 13? MTV News asked a few experts to offer their suggestions for what went wrong and how the show can get back on track.
"I don't think the problem was the panel," said Hollywood Reporter music editor Shirley Halperin. "Yes, there were problems, but that's not why people tuned out. The formula has gotten really stale, the contestants are not exciting and they have nothing to say. The show needs to reboot in a drastic way and they need to think about what today's generation of music lovers would like."
Halperin said step one for next year is to screen test the potential judges, get them in a room together and shoot some sample shows to see how their chemistry works, something she said it does not appear they did with this year's panel. "They seemed to have no idea Mariah was a long-winded as she was and there was an inkling that Nicki would be sassy and borderline mean, but not as much as she was," she said. "They didn't see how they worked together and the dynamic was not there."
The biggest change, though, is that "Idol" producers need to stop chasing after star power and find someone who is good on TV and knows their music history. "They need to have someone who can say, 'you better go to the record store and pick up this Beatles record right now!'" she said, alluding to the season 12 finalist's glaringly thin music history knowledge.
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