American Idol: to the REALLY listen to 20,000 people sing?

[dfbuzzbeater]

So if I remember correctly, in NY last night they said they had ~20,000 people auditioning. Do Simon, Randy, and Paula really listen to all 20,000 people in two days?!?! That's physically impossible. If they did it for 9 hours each day that's only 64,800 seconds, so each person would get 3 seconds.

so what do they do? do they have like 5 preliminary stations, and if you are really good or incredibly exploitable they send you on to the three judges?

anyone actually tried out for it?

I'm probably way behind the times here...but I used to think the show sucked and this is my first season watching it.

[NickMPK]

I think everyone sings in groups in front of preliminary judges for like 15 seconds each, and then the preliminary judges send the best people, and the most amusing people, on to Simon & Co.

[kcheel]

Nick is correct. The main judges probably only see a few hundred of them.

[dknightx]

right, this is another reason why the people who make it to to simon & co think they are really good (because they made it past the first audition). But when they realize that they were selected because they SUCK so much ... well that hurts the ego quite a bit.

[nyc999]

I've read that they send groups of 4-5 people in front of a producer and each person gets 30 seconds.