American Idol (season 8) had Simon Cowell as a judge.
Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler joined the judging panel in the tenth season, but both left in 2012 after two seasons
 Just hours before the eleventh-season finale, where Phillip Phillips was named the winner, Richard Rushfield, author of the book American Idol: The Untold Story, said, "You have this alliance between young girls and grandmas and they see it, not necessarily as a contest to create a pop star competing on the contemporary radio, but as 

