“American Idol” is losing one of its original voices — and some think that’s a good thing.

Randy Jackson, who was a judge on the show for 12 seasons and then acted as a mentor for one more, will not be back when the reality singing contest returns next year.

“I felt now was the perfect time to leave,” Jackson said in a statement. “I’m proud to have been a part of a series that discovered some incredible artists and will go down in history as one of the most successful television shows ever. A true original, ‘Idol’ started it all. Onto what’s next.”

That decision is “long, long overdue,” says TVLine, which argues that the show’s contestants need a stronger mentor who will truly help develop their careers.

“Jackson’s mentoring tenure was an unmitigated debacle. Either ‘Idol”s producers left every single bit of Jackson’s specific, cogent advice on the editing room floor for the duration of season 13 or the Dawg’s insights were limited to ‘you’ve got to sell it’-style pablum,” writes TVLine.

“The hope now is that executive producer Per Blankens will select a mentor based not on name recognition. The last thing ‘Idol’ needs is a bold-faced star who’ll devote nothing more than a few hours of superficial camera time to season 14.

http://bit.ly/1sOmS0f

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It’s a testament to David Simon’s gritty crime drama “The Wire” that it’s still constantly talked about more than a decade since it premiered.

The show was almost universally praised by critics but occasionally gets slagged for its bleak portrayal of crime-ridden Baltimore.

That’s the criticism of Mike Rowe, best known for hosting the Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs.”

The Baltimore City Paper recently reported on Rowe’s efforts to reshape the city’s image with a PR campaign highlighting the good in Baltimore.

“Personally, I think ‘The Wire’ is one of the best pieces of narrative fiction ever conceived. But you gotta admit, the ‘world’ that Simon presented is only one representation of a large American city. Now … Simon’s version of Baltimore has impacted the perception of millions of people who have never seen the town for themselves. That’s a problem,” Rowe said of the article in a blog post.

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Simon, who also has a prominent blog that’s well-read by fans, chimed in to defend the realness of his show and its characters, even if there are few happy endings.

“Telling only the pretty, affirming stories has a cost … telling tales in which the poor and marginalized — including those who live and work amid an underground economy that is, in fact, the largest employer in Baltimore city — are rendered as human rather than as merely the chow for avenging cops has, at least, some small chance of perhaps slowing the war on the underclass now ongoing in this country,” Simon writes.

“I think viewers are smart enough to understand that these stories represent certain quadrants of my city, but not all of Baltimore, and even more certainly not the whole of the metropolitan area. They are stories about one America, long and purposely ignored and isolated, and while set in Baltimore, they are applicable to East St. Louis or South Chicago or North Philadelphia.”

http://bit.ly/1xXxxdG

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The latest episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s online mini-talk-show “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” is a good one, featuring a funny chat with rising star Amy Schumer.

They talk about their shared neuroses and difficulties maintaining a friendly face in public.

Watch as Seinfeld bites his tongue to avoid ripping into a hapless coffee shop waitress who takes his simple — but odd —order.

http://bit.ly/1pZXJ8j