American Idol season 16 posts first Katy Perry video hyping auditions

American Idol season 16 is coming onto ABC for the first time in the new year, and the show has posted its first video with Katy Perry

The video below is mostly featuring Perry doing her part in order to encourage contestants from all over America to try out for the new season. The show is doing something a little bit different this year, reducing the number of huge open calls to just two while making sure that their bus tour hits up many locales all of the country. Take a look at that below.

West Bus Tour
Portland, OR – August 17
Oakland, CA – August 20
Provo, UT – August 23
Denver, CO – August 26
Omaha, NE – August 29
Tulsa, OK – September 1
Shreveport, LA – September 4
Muscle Shoals, AL – September 7

East Bus Tour
Orlando, FL – August 17
Miami, FL – August 19
Atlanta, GA – August 22
Charleston, SC – August 25
Asheville, NC – August 27
Louisville, KY – August 30
Pittsburgh, PA – September 3
Annapolis, MD – September 5
Boston, MA – September 8

Open Audition Cities
Chicago, IL – September 11
New Orleans, LA – September 14

One of the things that’s very interesting about this schedule is that clearly, the show is trying to find undiscovered talent more so than familiar names or people with a history of performing — New York and Los Angeles are NOT on this list at all, and there isn’t even an audition in Southern California. New Yorkers could go to either Pittsburgh or Boston, but that’s a little bit of a drive / train ride to get there.

The big surprise to us here is Muscle Shoals, a reasonably small town — with the audition here, producers are seemingly hoping that people from Mobile, Nashville, and then a number of deep south small towns will stop by and audition.

One other thing that is reasonably awkward about this video: The fact that Perry is the only person in the video. It’s a clear reminder that American Idol has yet to hire another judge for the upcoming season. They don’t even have a host locked in yet! These auditions won’t feature judges, but rather producers. They will hold auditions, potentially at Disney World and Disneyland, later in the year before the remainder of the competition airs. Hey, why not run a little bit with the ABC synergy?

To audition online for the new season, you can do so by heading over to the link here. We’ll have more news soon enough. (Photo: ABC.)