Prediction: Ellen on Idol will help NBC more than it does FOX

This is my opinion of what I have seen so far of Ellen Degeneres' judging abilities on American Idol on FOX.

Like Mediaweek's Marc Berman and his Podcast co-hosts, I feel Ellen Degeneres does not belong on American Idol. I waited until the first same day taping episode which aired tonight to make a fair judgment about her judging abilities. Marc Berman and company are correct about that Ellen adds little or nothing to Idol. She seems to like repeat herself or just repeat what the other judges before her said. It is like she is trying too hard to think of something to say. She wasn't even funny for most of the program. The segment with Simon appearing to make unwanted advances at Ellen looked like a cheap Late Night Talk Show Segment.

Ellen did not seem to be able to connect with any of the contestant's stories other than what their ages were. Cowell made one good observation about one of the contestants being a glass blower and related it to how they performed the song. Ellen was probably there when the contestants rehearsed and still couldn't think of anything to say about the contestants based on their back stories.

I actually thought the most memorable joke of the night was not Ellen's but Simon Cowell's comment that Ryan Seacrest's first kiss was not memorable to either him or his girlfriend at the time. It is part of a longtime ongoing gag on Idol between Cowell and Seacrest to make fun about each other in rather harmless ways.

If some polling organization were to ask whether Ellen was a better Idol judge than Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Kara Dioguardi, I have a feeling she would get a high approval rating only because Cowell usually plays the brutal honest guy role, Jackson usually plays the unintelligible role because he uses so many words or terms that many people are not familiar with, and Kara is by far the least well known of the bunch, and because Ellen plays the Charity card and bribes people on her well known daytime talk show.

Ellen in my opinion was so poor as a judge that this might be the break NBC has been waiting for. NBC who has been doing great in the ratings due to the US dominance at the Vancouver Winter Games is going right back to 4th place and many of their shows will be DOA (which is a term Marc Berman uses which means Dead on Arrival). NBC is blowing their Post Olympics ratings boost with The Marriage Ref which is going to air immediately after the closing ceremonies of the Vancouver Games. The next night, Monday night, NBC is going with 2 Law and Orders and a Chuck episode. It doesn't take a Programming Expert like Marc Berman to know that Law and Order and Chuck are not going to attract the 20+ million viewers that they will have gotten the previous nights for the past 2 weeks before them when Chuck usually gets under 10 million viewers per episode.

But even with NBC's poor Post Olympic programming schedule, NBC could definately make gains on Tuesdays with Biggest Loser being consistently good for them and the uncertainty of how Ellen's performance on Idol will play out. I think Idol could lose viewers this year with Ellen's uninspired comments and hopefully they have a way to keep her from appearing on the show after this season. Only time will tell how Idol's ratings will hold up with Ellen as a judge.