[quote name=\'rugrats1\' date=\'Jan 4 2004, 04:56 PM\']
And it sure looked like the part of the "World Idol" final where he plugged his show was added on to the U.S. version...
Apparently, each country had their own hosts hosting "World Idol" in their own country -- in Canada, Ben Mulroney, the host of CTV's "Canadian Idol", anchored "World Idol" on CTV, which of course, was "sim-subbed" over Fox's coverage at the time.
("Sim-sub" -- if a US and Canadian channel show the same program at the same time, with the Canadian version offering 95% of the same content as the Us channel, the Canadian channel has the right to override the US channel with that Canadian channel on cable and satellite systems.)[/quote]
However, we got Ant and Dec on the first part since Seacrest had begged out due to doing the Fox New Year's Eve special (which got delayed to 12:30 a.m. in Chicago thanks to a local New Year's Eve show starring the morning jocks from WTMX *and* the regular "Simpsons" and "That 70s Show" reruns at 10 p.m.--WFLD must not want to offend "Simpsons" fans by pre-empting it).
As for the finale, I believe the local hosts only appeared to announce their votes and Ant and Dec were hosts in all territories. In this case, the exception was Belgium, where judge Nina announced the vote, presumably because the Belgian "Idol" host was unfamiliar with the English language--not that didn't stop the Polish host.
ObGameShow: Judge Nina, of course, is no relation to Judge Von Eric from "Play the Percentages."