For the past two years, "American Idol" has been FOX's winter Golden Goose, a late season shot of adrenaline to salvage otherwise weak year. By maintaining "Idol's" once-a-year status, FOX has resisted killing the Golden Goose. But this spring, get ready, because FOX is about to give you more "Idol" than ever before and possibly more "Idol" than you can stand.

In its fourth installment, "American Idol" is undergoing some of its largest format changes yet, expanding to a schedule-glutting three nights of live programming a week for the early rounds.

As was already announced, FOX will expand the number of episodes from the audition process to 10, spending six hours on the various audition cities and then four hours on the intermediate Hollywood phase of the competition. All of those shows, which will air over five weeks (compared to only three last year), focus on rounds of the competition which were already completed.

Instead of opening voting to a pool of 32 finalists and letting viewers vote on four groups of eight, the Hollywood round will cull the wannabe singers down to 24, evenly divided into 12 men and 12 women. Starting on Monday, Feb. 21, "Idol" will move to three weeks of live hours on Mondays and Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET and Wednesdays at 9 p.m. On the Monday and Tuesday shows, the men and then the women will perform and the American people will vote. On Wednesdays, two men and two women will be eliminated.

The final complement of 12 will be selected by Wednesday, March 9 and "Idol" will return to airing twice a week.

According to USA Today, the much maligned celebrity judges may no longer be a part of the final rounds, but such luminaries as Gene Simmons, LL Cool J, Brandy and Kenny Loggins made appearances for the audition rounds.

"We want to make sure the show, whenever it can, gets as fresh as it can," Executive Producer Ken Warwick tells the colorful newspaper. "We're doing a little, but not too much. The show works, so we don't want to overfix it."