Season 2
The second season started airing from January 21, 2003. For this season auditions were held in Fall 2002, after the season one finale. This time judges auditioned in the cities like, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Detroit, Atlanta, Nashville and Austin. In this season, Brian Dunkleman didn’t appear on the show and Ryan Seacrest handled the stage all alone. There were reports that Dunkleman was not happy working on the show and Studio too was dissatisfied with his performance.
This time, a larger number of people turned up for the auditions from every station and the whole credit for the popularity of the show goes to the success of participants of first season. In the fifth episode, judges finalized 32 semi-finalists. Eight of them got selected by the judges. Later through voting, two more got selected to complete the final ten.
In episode 12, clippings of auditions were shown containing worst performances of the auditions. Interestingly, in the sixteenth episode, Clay Aiken was picked up as wild card entry by judges, who, later on became the runner up of the season. This time six guys and six girls were chosen for the American idol race.
It won’t be wrong to call this season as the most heated and controversial season. At first, everybody got surprised at elimination of Charles Grigsby due to low votes in episode 20. Later in episode 24, there was no elimination as; Corey Clark was kicked out of show for concealing his police record and thus violating terms of the show. Later in 2006, he revealed to the media that he had an affair with Judge Paula Abdul and cited that as the reason why he was kicked out of the show. But no evidences supporting these allegations were found.
Beside this, another strong contestant Frenchie Davis was disqualified after her topless photos were discovered on internet. This season also remained mired in controversies due to the inefficiency of phone voting system. The phone system failed to take that much load and over 150 million votes were dropped. That’s why, in third season voting system was changed.
Eventually, in the course of competition, Kimberely Locke, Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard emerged as top three. Former American Idols made guest performances during the final episodes. Finally, the votes decided who the winner was. Ruben Studdard bagged the American Idol Title and Clay Aiken was declared the runner up on 21st May, 2003.
