Howard Stern Tries to Destroy American Idol

Howard Stern has been promoting voting for the "worst performer" in an effort to derail the American Idol TV show.

FOX has dominated primetime TV for the last few years with their hit show, American Idol. This phenomena has caused more than a little heartburn among TV executives in Hollywood who have sought to derail the hit.

Now shock jock, Howard Stern says that he has found a way. There is a new website created by a 24-year-old American idol fan that asks people to support the "Worst performer". This in itself brings a different spin on the hit TV show, because Sanjay Malakar's staying power is being equated to being the Worst Performer, an obviously dubious distinction.

Malakar is young, cute and engaging when it comes to his interactions with Simon Cowell. But the boy is an off-key, lyric-forgetting, strangely coiffed teenager. This is not to say that he is the worst contestant to come down the pike. In season one, Nikki McKibbin was pretty bad, and there have been others.

This time Howard Stern is making an impact. "We're corrupting the entire thing," said Stern on his Sirius Satellite Radio show last Thursday after the weekly results were in. Sanjaya made it into the top nine finalist.

It is a sad thing that Stern finds so much glee from this. "All of us are routing 'American Idol.' It's so great," said Stern, "The No. 1 show in television and it's getting ruined." Stern says that he hopes to turn the competition into a farce and destroy its popularity in the process. Let's not discuss what he's going to do to a 17-year old's ego, by having America dub him the "Worst Idol" contestant. Shame on you Howard Stern!

The American Idol show is breaking through the roof of ratings that it has created in previous years. It draws an average of 32 million viewers every week, which equates to nearly 50 percent more than the next highest rated show.

The sad thing here is Stern is playing with Malakar's life like a chess piece. This all started on March 20th, when a guy named David Della Terza "appeared" on Stern's radio show. Terza created a Website called votefortheworst.com. Previous to Terza's "appearance", Sanjaya Malakar had been among the lowest two or three vote-getters for the first few weeks of the show. Since the website debut, Malakar is no longer among the lowest performers.

Now I'm not saying that the boy doesn't have his fans, like the young girl that cried a few weeks back. He is genuinely popular among the pre- and early-teen brackets, and even among older women and Indian-Americans. Indian newspapers are tracking his progress with a vengeance, both in the United States and India.

Randy Jackson, one of the three "Idol" judges, responded to Malakar's recent performance of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by saying, "That song was almost unlistenable for me, man."

And in the final say on this, Simon Cowell, our acid-tongued British judge, has threatened to quit the show if Sanjaya Malakar wins. "I won't be back if he does," Cowell recently told the television show "Extra."

A Fox spokeswoman declined to comment on Cowell's comment, but the network said in a statement that efforts like Mr. Stern's do not affect the results. "With 30 million votes every week, and hundreds of millions of votes over the season, the power of true fans of 'American Idol' dwarfs any attempt of people trying to gain notoriety," the statement said. "Despite the press coverage, these campaigns don't affect who moves forward in the competition."

A side note: The bookmakers at bodog.com have placed 25-to-1 odds on Sanjaya Malakar's winning the competition; the favorite, Melinda Doolittle, is listed at 4-to-5.