Dear Producers of American Idol Rewind,

Are you really this ignorant about why people like American Idol? It’s not the audition rounds that make us give a damn, and it’s not the banter from the judges. It’s the singing. We are here for the singing.

American Idol pere already treats the singing like an annoying obligation, shoving truncated pop hits between endless interviews, promotional spots, and blathering bullshit from Randy Jackson. But at least the flagship series shows complete performances.

But you, AIR producers? You just shoved six weeks of Season Three performance episodes into one hour of television. In that time, you treated the singing like it didn’t matter. Instead, you devoted almost all your airtime to voiceover narration about what the singing sounded like (“Fantasia was great on movie night, Jasmine struggled with Elton John Week, etc.”)

So, instead of letting us hear the singers you just told us about them. And also? You showed at least ten minutes of “exclusive new interviews” of Amy Adams and Diana DeGarmo yammering on about how this was a real competition and everyone was in it to win it. And though you excised entire numbers, you included multiple banalities from Paula and Simon.

Do you really think this is what we care about? Interviews and judges? Apparently you do, because when you recapped Jennifer Hudson’s career-making performance of “Circle of Life,” you cut away in the middle of her money note to show Randy complimenting her. When Fantasia sang “Summertime”–arguably one of the best performances in the history of the series–you only showed us a fraction of her work.

Why would you do that? Who would choose a George Huff interview over the complete Fantasia performance? People who haven’t seen Season Three never learn what the fuss was about. People who were there the first time are denied their nostalgia.

And why, my dear producers, were six performance episodes collapsed into one when there were multiple weeks of audition episodes? Why did the sucky people get hours of screentime, while the ostensibly talented singers got hosed? Why was William Hung’s audition shown uncut, with never-before-seen footage, while  Jennifer Hudson’s performance of “I Have Nothing” got reduced to a snippet?

You should all be fired. You’ve mangled a perfectly good syndicated program into one of the worst television experiences I’ve ever had.

That’s right, producers of American Idol Rewind. One of the worst experiences I’ve ever had.

You can eat it.

Sincerely,

Mark

p.s. — Those YouTube clips up there are of the full performances you butchered. Why can YouTube do a better job of this than you?