"I don't know how it happened myself," Ellen DeGeneres said, after confirmation that she is taking Paula Abdul's vacated seat as the new permanent judge on American Idol.

"I have not missed one episode of that show," she added.  "I love everything about it and I love music, as you know.  Hopefully I'm the people's point of view because I'm just like you.  I sit at home and I watch it and I don't have that technical... I'm not looking at it in a critical way from the producer's mind.  I'm looking at it as a person who is going to buy the music and is going to relate to that person."

Ellen said those words to the audience of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, in a taping for an episode that will air later today.  You can see the video below:




The Los Angeles Times just filled in on more details about Ellen's inclusion in the show--and, as expected, it began when she appeared as a guest judge on another Fox reality series, So You Think You Can Dance.  Network executives noticed what she did, and while Paula hasn't officially left Idol at the time, they knew she wasn't holding on to the gig any longer.

Fox was pretty lucky: Warner Bros., who produce The Ellen DeGeneres Show, did not get in the way of negotiations for the comedian to become the newest member of the Idol judging panel.  However, before agreeing to the move, the extended her contract with the daytime talk show for three more years, until 2014.

Ellen took the opportunity to relate her Idol stint to everyone else.  "I'm going to have a day job and a night job," she told her talk show audience.  "The times we're living in... we're all doing that.  This is so exciting for me.  We've been dealing with this for the last couple of weeks and I've been dying to tell everyone.  It's just been so hard to keep it a secret and we just finally got the OK and I'm so excited."

And a well-kept secret it was.


- Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image courtesy of Fox)