American Idol 8 News - There WILL BE a Top 36 and a Wildcard Round!

Here's the internal memo found by MJ's Big Blog:

FOX Network Program Executive Council DECEMBER 2008 MINUTES

AMERICAN IDOL When will the schedule and any new details about this season be released?

January through March details will hopefully be released before the Holidays. All episodes will be Tuesday-Wednesday. No Thursday’s planned; same overall number of hours as last year. There will be 3 weeks of auditions and 2 weeks of Hollywood rounds. There will be 36 contestants coming here to Hollywood as opposed to 24 last year. There will be a wild card week and there will continue to be 12 contestants in the Finals. There will be a couple of more 2 hour shows than in the past. Promotional thrust will have fewer bad singers and more ‘aspirational’ singers. There will be no Idol Gives Back.

Omigosh! How exciting! Exactly 5 more weeks...