We've known since January that Simon Cowell isn't coming back to "American Idol" next year.
Yesterday, Ellen DeGeneres said she couldn't take another season of judging. "It was hard for me to judge people and sometimes hurt their feelings," she said in a statement.
Now, TMZ says Kara DioGuardi has been canned, leaving only Randy Jackson. If the gossip site is right, he'll be joined by Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez.
So far, Fox has commented on Ellen's departure, but isn't expected to announce next year's panel until Monday at the earliest.
While the show remains the No. 1 and 2 program for the season, it's numbers are down and a shakeup is clearly in order. And, frankly, Ellen was never at ease judging the singers.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
