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Clearly inspired by the endless parade of swishy, lunatic-costumed circus freaks who both torture and delight us at the start of every American Idol season, Simon Cowell has announced his newest reality show competition will be the search for the next Siegfried and Roy:

Cowell will create a show for NBC that allows viewers to ultimately decide which performer is rewarded with a headline spot in a Las Vegas show, NBC announced Thursday. [...]


"Personally, I hope to find the next Siegfried and Roy," Cowell said of the magicians who were a Las Vegas mainstay for decades. [...]

NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said Cowell is a natural for the executive producer job.

"Simon has his finger on the pulse of pop culture," he said in a statement.

We hope Cowell and a mildly deluded, hit-hungry Reilly really consider the logistics of mounting a series of this scope: Not only will they have to deal with the requisite stadium-capacity sized crowds of hopefuls, but they'll have to accommodate their accompanying menagerie of exotic jungle cats, orangutans, Arabian horses, giant spinning saws, and wardrobes packed with Cher and Diana Ross-lookalike costumes as well. Still, if they do manage to pull it off, it could turn into a ratings hit for NBC, marrying the best of Idol's one-shot-at-fame appeal to the tacky showmanship of Dancing With the Stars assuming audiences vote for talent and not just for which contestant was most spectacularly dragged offstage by their heads in the gaping maw of an albino Bengal tiger.