14 DAY TRIAL // Rehearsals for the next season of American Idol are about to begin, but speculation on whether longtime judge Paula Abdul would return continued to make the rounds until yesterday, when the star herself took to Twitter to announce she was out of the show. FOX too issued a statement shortly after, confirming Abdul’s words, but no one seems to know just yet what went down. According to TMZ, it all boiled down to money and how much the network was willing to pay Paula.
Apparently, not that much, TMZ says, or, at least, not as much as she would have wanted. Reports in the media claim Abdul was making between $2-3 million a year with American Idol but she was not happy with her paycheck, especially after host Ryan Seacrest and fellow judge Simon Cowell got significant raises just a few weeks ago. Therefore, Abdul threatened to quit, reportedly in the hope that it would get the network to up the ante on the money, and her salary would get somewhere close to Seacrest and Cowell’s.
That didn’t happen either. “Our sources at American Idol say the show made Paula Abdul two offers... and then she just went and quit by tweet. As we already reported, we’re told Paula was pulling in somewhere between $2 and $3 million a year and she wanted more. Our sources say A.I. made her an offer that she didn’t like at all. Paula countered but producers didn’t want to pay that much, so they countered with another offer. Rather than responding to the second offer, Paula shocked everyone by tweeting her goodbye. The weirdest thing... A.I. took the tweet seriously and responded with an official sayonara.” TMZ informs.
Moreover, the same sources are telling the paparazzi agency / celebrity gossip website that Paula Abdul made it extremely difficult for producers during negotiations, changing her management twice and not really showing any intentions of making this work. This happened because she had to ask for more money, when the other two were simply offered the raise, insiders say. So, as we also reported yesterday, when she saw she was not getting the raise, Abdul quit on Twitter, without as much as bothering to let Fox know of it.
“With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return to IDOL. I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all being a part of a show that I helped from day1 become an international phenomenon.” Paula wrote on Twitter. Fox took the hint and replied in return, “While Paula will not be continuing with us, she’s a tremendous talent and we wish her the best.” Also according to TMZ, Abdul’s replacement is Kara DioGuardi, with Fox already signing her.