Now, it's a kinder, gentler version of 'Idol'

What have they done to "American Idol" - "they" being some worldwide conspiracy calculated to make us actually missSimon Cowell?

New open. New judges. New tone. Even new Randy Jackson (he's lost weight and wears ties and preppy sweaters). In fact, let's start with the judges, because the alchemy of "Idol" is so entirely dependent on that threesome who are now largely a new threesome. Steven Tyler actually said he wants to find "the next Janis Joplin." Who (85 percent of the audience said) is "Janis Joplin?"

He was loose as a goose, and a goose would have been as comprehensible at times. To one contestant who is not going to Hollywood: "Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a child?" In some remote corner of our collective brain, we assumed he would be the New Simon; Steven Tyler is not the New Simon.

Then, Jennifer Lopez. She was gorgeous: A model for a shampoo commercial who tossed her hennaed locks on the director's cue. The new queen of "Idol" even remembered a recidivist contestant from some distant past season, saying that "me and Marc . . . "

Instant buzz kill.

"I think I'm going to be compassionate," said she. "I'm not in the business of crushing spirits."

That statement of course lies at the heart of the New "Idol." Like New Coke, it's sweeter, gentler on the palate, and much better than the Old Coke, or so the Coca-Cola Company once declared. But the obvious problem is that the Old "Idol" was an obstacle course, through which a nobody ran the gauntlet of three specific personalities and then hopefully emerged as a major star during the May sweeps.

But so far, season 10 is shaping up to be "Idol's" Stuart Smalley edition - contestants are good enough, smart enough, and doggonit, people are gonna like them.

We'll see.