After three seasons of giving nothing but encouraging advice and compliments to contestants on American Idol, Fox has given Paula Abdul an ultimatum: make a negative statement each show or you’re out. The producer personally advised Paula to “bring out the bitchy diva within you. We know you have it.”

After polling viewers about what Fox could do to make the show more interesting, the overwhelming response was “make Paula Abdul less nice” and “have Paula sleep with more contestants because not only is it wonderful fodder for juicy gossip, but we love reasons to criticize celebrities because their lives are so much better than ours.” Fox chose to ignore the latter statement but did pass out Paula’s cell phone number to the male contestants deemed suitably creepy.

The producer of American Idol stated, “It’s okay for guest hosts to give nothing but praise to contestants, but when you’re part of the show, you’ve gotta show some attitude.” He went on to explain that while someone like Simon Cowell draws in a wide and varied audience because everyone wants to know what he’ll say next, Paula Abdul only attracts the “old, single men demographic that wear Atari T-shirts and are nostalgic for the 80’s, especially that hot Paula Abdul video with the cartoon cat.”

Fox has given Abdul flash cards with the words and phrases: “terrible,” “god-awful,” “bad,” “really really bad,” “pukey,” “ack!” and “makes me want to gouge my ears out you little twit” so that she may practice using them in sentences.