[DeltAlum]

I watched the entire show this year for a change.

I agree with much of what has been said, although while I am not a J-Lo fan at all, I thought their performance was OK -- but certainly different from the rest of the show. The pace itself of the song was enough to bring things to almost a halt.

I thought the gospel segment suffered from lack of consistency more than anything else.

While a decent idea, the Tsunami Relief segment was totally average -- nowhere close to "We Are The World" which seems to have become the benchmark for these things.

I don't know how noticable it was to anyone but me, but there was a fairly different "look" to the show this year due to a changing of the guard on the TV side. Pierre Cossette, who has been Executive Producer of the show for many years is handing over the reigns. This year he was Co-EP with Ken Ehrends (Don't think that's spelled correctly, which bothers me because he's a fellow Ohio U. grad) who is EP of the Oscars, I think. Also, Walter C. Miller, who had directed a lot of country music specials and other big projects was the Producer Director. (His son Paul -- who I think has done the Grammy's before and did at least one season of American Idle, oh I mean Idol -- is also an O.U. grad and a classmate of mine)

They tried some stuff, only some of which worked. The stark white background on the U2 piece ruined the flesh tones which is no surprize. TV cameras don't work all that well with that much white.

Other than that, I thought the graphics were inconsistent. But it will take the new team a while to get it together I suppose.