How Are The “American Idol” Producers Going To React To Paula Goodspeed?

noah | November 12, 2008 3:00 am

One thing the people behind American Idol have counted on in the past is the ratings racked up by the early-in-the-season audition episodes, which devote just as much airtime to the biggest sets of pipes as they do to those hopeless hopefuls who seem to aspire to become nothing more than the next William Hung. But one wonders if the news that a former contestant on the show–one who had three minutes of airtime during Season Five devoted to her slightly manic Paula Abdul fandom and her not-all-that-great rendition of “Proud Mary”–committed suicide outside Abdul’s home yesterday isn’t going to give the producers at least a little bit of a pause when they start editing the audition episodes for next season’s first episodes, which start back up on Jan. 13.

Thanks to the Internet, Paula Goodspeed’s audition package is still around:

Without the horrible context of the past 24 hours, Goodspeed’s appearance seems like your boilerplate bad Idol audition: Overconfident singer, barbs from Simon, really bad vocal performance, sorta-snarky Ryan Seacrest kicker. (Simon Cowell’s jokes about her braces may be a bit over-the-top, but they’re nowhere near the “bush baby” bit he would drop a year later.) But you have to wonder if, given that Idol‘s audition numbers were down this year and ratings on the show have been dropping in general, the producers were planning on filling more airtime with “funny” bits like the one above. Are the antics of Alexis Cohen going to be funny to a viewing public that spent at least an hour at work searching for Goodspeed’s MySpace page, on which she claimed that Paula Abdul was her secret crush?

Paula Abdul fanatic Paula Godspeed found dead near singer’s home [NY Daily News] Paula Goodspeed – Proud Mary [Dailymotion]