Sepinwall: Lack Of Early Round ‘Idol’ Airtime Hurt A.J. & Leslie

Alan Sepinwall of the New Jersey Star ledger had a theory on why Leslie Hunt and A.J. Tabaldo were eliminated from ‘American Idol’ last night, while Sanjaya Malakar and Antonella Barba managed to stick around. “Antonella (and, to use a male counterpart, Sanjaya Malakar) got tons of screen time in the early rounds; A.J. and Leslie were invisible,” he writes. “The judges tore Antonella and Sanjaya to shreds, which mobilized their fanbases; the judges didn’t say anything notable about A.J. and Leslie. In ‘Idol’, it’s the extremes that matter.”