At this point in the competition, pictures are more important than names in the dismissal of semifinalists in Fox's "American Idol."
It's too early to really form loyalties, especially for the four sent home Thursday night in the first cut of the season based on viewer votes. Twenty singers remain to battle again next week.
Here are the first four cut from the semifinals:
- Tyler Grady, 20, Nazareth, Pa.
- Joe Munoz, 20, Huntington Park, Calif.
- Janell Wheeler, 24, of Orlando, Fla.
- Ashley Rodriguez, 22, of Chelsea, Mass.
The most suprised of the 20 remaining semifinalists was Tim Urban, 20, of Duncanville, Texas. He was a replacement semi-finalist after another singer, Chris Golightly, was disqualified amid questions about a recording contract he had.
Urban clearly expected to be sent home, especially after the judges critiqued him the previous night.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
