There are a few websites doing their "Ways to fix American Idol" so I'm going to do mine
Ways to fix American Idol
1. Please let the contestants sing for more than 90 seconds. Letting someone sing for 3 minutes would be nice and they would be able to sing most, if not all, of the song that way.
2. This idea is courtesy of VFTW and I like it but it is unlikely ever to happen. Have a two night performance show where the contestants are able to sing a 3 minute long song on both days(lets say Tuesday and Wednesday as usual) and either have a half hour results show on Thursday or a 5 minute segment as part of the 10 o'clock local news with the results. 5 minutes is all that is necessary for the results. No need to have a full show where Ryan Secrest drags out a full hour which is basically an hour long commercial.
3. This idea is courtesy of Entertainment Weekly. Please get rid of Randy and Paula. I don't need to hear Paula say "You look beautiful tonight." Randy is just getting boring with the same recycled comments over and over. Get 2 additional judges who actually "judge" the contestants.
4. Also courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, please raise the minimum age to 18. Archuleta is inevitably going to win and he is the single most boring great singer I've ever heard. Understand that? Probably not. Moving on... Other than Archuleta, most 16-17 year olds on American Idol have plainly sucked and need a couple of years to get better.
5. No mentors at all. None. Not even contemporary mentors.
6. Ability for contestants to sing more contemporary music. The contestants are not living in the 60's. While the 60's had some great music, we know none of the American Idol contestants are going to be reviving the 60's when they actually start their music career.
7. Get some real songwriters with some talent to write the winning song because the winners of the songwriting competition over the last two seasons of American Idol certainly didn't have any talent. A wasted single is guaranteed to the winner of American Idol this year.
I was about to post that. Dial Idol has never been wrong and I doubt it is wrong this time. I guess it came down to who built the strongest fanbase and who made the best/most memorable performances all season long. Look at that huge gap.
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Archi won 
David A for the win
I hope Dial Idol is wrong.