Maybe DeGeneres will bring humor to 'Idol'

Just as we are longing for the good old days when Paula Abdul would say something stupid and make "American Idol" interesting, Ellen DeGeneres arrives in the judge's seat at 8 tonight on Fox.

The 52-year-old talk-show host and comedian is a lot quicker and glibber than Abdul. But is being funny a requirement? A quick wit might be lost on the "Idol" faithful.

Let's hope DeGeneres can lift us out of the drudgery of the audition rounds.

Will she stand up to lame duck Simon Cowell? He's just coasting now, recycling put-downs from past seasons.

"I won't have a hard time being brutally honest," DeGeneres told CBS's Katie Couric. "But I won't be mean. You don't have to be mean to be honest."

Ellen also has said she found Cowell "even meaner" than she first thought.

What we see tonight was taped four weeks ago. And it will take four episodes to whittle the 181 Golden Ticket holders down to the top 24.

LENO EXITS: It's the end of an era. Wait. Make that the end of an error.

The last episode of "The Jay Leno Show" airs at 10 tonight. NBC's cost-cutting, cheaper-than-a-drama experiment is over. After the Winter Olympics, Leno returns to a possibly less significant "Tonight" show March 1.

If only Leno's show had been as funny as the 15-second Super Bowl commercial he made with CBS rival David Letterman. But that needed Letterman and Oprah Winfrey to make it work. If Conan O'Brien had been in that commercial, it would have been historical and hysterical.

SUPER RANKINGS: With more than 106 million viewers, Super Bowl XLIV surpassed the 1983 finale of "Mash" to become the most-watched program in television history.

Meanwhile, Doritos, Snickers, Bud Light and the Letterman/Leno/Oprah spot were winners in various measurements of commercials.

USA Today's Ad Meter popularity poll put the Snickers commercial, in which Betty White and Abe Vigoda are flattened, at No. 1. It was followed by the Doritos dog collar shocker, the Bud Light house of beer and the Budweiser Clydesdales' pals for life. The Letterman spot was not included in USA Today's poll.

On TiVo's list of most-recorded, the Doritos ad with a boy telling off his single mom's date was followed by Letterman, Snickers and Tim Tebow's Focus on the Family ad.

Meanwhile, Google's clever pitch about an online search for romance in Paris topped the annual "most effective" list compiled by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. It was followed by "effective" ads for Denny's, Audi, Volkswagen, Dodge and Snickers again. Betty White rules.

A MovieTickets.com poll found "Alice in Wonderland" as the most memorable movie trailer.