"American Idol" news roundup for Tuesday, Jan. 19

"American Idol" Season 8 runner-up Adam Lambert appears on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" today at 4 p.m. on KING-5 TV. The show was taped last Wednesday. Here's a clip of him performing "If I Had You" on the show:

• As usual, the USA Today Idol blog has a couple of interesting items. First up is the weekly airplay report, which notes that Kris Allen's "Live Like We're Dyin'" is quietly working its way up the Adult Contemorary charts and is in danger of becoming a hit.

There's even a Seattle angle to the report, with this section: "Blake Lewis has the highest-charting new Idol single this week, as 'Heartbreak on Vinyl' enters at No. 85, with WKNHC-FM (thank you, dear reader, for so tactfully pointing out the error, which I should have caught - BP), a Seattle station run by Nathan Hale High School leading the way. Maybe that's because Blake is scheduled to play a special VIP performance at the station's studios on Friday." (More info on Lewis' performance here. I assume you can either listen live on 89.5 FM or donate $750(!) to the station to attend the event in person.)

And in another post, blog writer Brian Mansfield is opening a can of worms that he might regret. He's posted a poll: Who is the best runner-up in American Idol history? Given the fierce loyalty of David Archuleta fans, I think I know how this one is going to turn out ...

• Jermaine Sellers, of Joliet, Ill., got a golden ticket last week and his parents say it's no surprise: "When he was 3 years old, we discovered that he had a gift," says his mother, Marlene Sellers.

• This isn't so much a news item as a reminder: Part of the reason you don't see some of the auditions in these early rounds on Idol is because it costs money for the show to buy the rights to have the songs performed. In fact, once the show reaches the Top 24 in February, all of the songs must be cleared in advance, and if it costs too much or if the rights simply can't be obtained, the contestant has to choose another song.

Two famous examples of this concerned Archuleta in Season 7. In the Hollywood round, he sang "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley, and even though people in attendance raved about it later, it was never filmed because the band refused to allow Idol to buy the rights. And later in that season, when Archuleta mixed a bit of "Beautiful Girls" in with "Stand By Me," Idol producers reportedly got angry because they had not cleared the part. (Read more about this in a post I wrote last year.)