"Talent" Winner Makes a Deal
2006-09-25

People Kellie Pickler Katharine McPhee Taylor Hicks Regis Philbin David Hasselhoff Simon Cowell TV Programs America's Got Talent American Idol Reality Show American Idol Season 5

If you win a talent show produced by a British bloke named Simon, chances are you're getting a record deal.

America's Got Talent champ Bianca Ryan proved the rule Monday, inking her first contract, ever, with Columbia Records/SYCO.

The soulful 12-year-old's first album is slated for a Nov. 14 release, the same date that debut albums from American Idol winner Taylor Hicks and finalists Katharine McPhee and Kellie Pickler have been scheduled to drop.

You can almost see Simon Cowell grinning smugly. The America's Got Talent executive producer referred to Ryan recently as "potentially one of the best singers I have ever heard in my life," according to a Columbia Records press release. Ryan's performance of the Dreamgirls tune "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" catapulted her past her fellow contestants during the series' Aug. 17 finale and right into the arms of a million-dollar payday.

The Philadelphia native's freshman effort will feature both new material and old, including her crown-clinching Dreamgirls cover, R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" and Bette Midler's "The Rose."

While the Simon Fuller-produced American Idol already demonstrated that having a talent like Ryan's is a sure way to viewers' hearts, Cowell set out to show that the non-singers out there--for instance, those who rely on juggling, snapping their fingers, or changing their clothes to entertain the masses--can be loved by America, too.

Cowell's experiment proved fruitful, becoming the top-rated show of the summer. But in an effort to find out whether these contestants, be they singer, juggler or finger-snapper, have what it takes to make it in the show biz world, America's Got Talent has added a boot camp phase to the competition.

"When you are putting young singers in, you have to make sure there are five or six parts to their act…that they can sustain being on a show like this for five, six, seven weeks," Cowell said Monday during a telephone press conference with reporters. During the two-week boot camp, experts in the contestants' respective fields, vocal coaches, stylists, show folks from Vegas, etc., will meet with the finalists and help them be the best whatever-they-are they can be.

"We set up with the premise to say there will be no rules or criteria attached," Cowell said. "You've got to allow literally everyone on."

Even the, um, exotic dancer?

"Strippers are always welcome on this show," Cowell said good-naturedly. "No rules--we're never going to ban strippers, no.

Host Regis Philbin and judges Piers Morgan, Brandy and David Hasselhoff will all be back for season two, which airs in January. It turns out that Hasselhoff's previous comment that Cowell "conned" him into appearing on the show was made in jest. Not very successful jest, but jest all the same.

"I think it was David's vague attempt at humor because he called me afterward and said, 'Oh, I was trying to be ironic and sarcastic,' and I said, 'It didn't quite come over that way,'" Cowell explained. "He was genuinely apologetic about it and I think he was trying to be funny without really succeeding