American Idol auditions

Over 30 million people tune into the average episode of Fox’s American Idol, pretty much twice the audience as its closest competitor in ratings. More than 12,000 people lined up to audition at the show’s Texas Stadium tryouts in August. And yet, while the show set up camp on the second floor of the W Hotel this weekend for a round of callback auditions that could send a lucky few onto Hollywood, you could hang out in the hotel, even spend the night and never notice that something BIG was going on. In fact, we did (on Friday night), and here’s what we found.
Tom Maurstad