Local 'Idol' winners get TV time

If, as an ''American Idol" producer has claimed, Boston's auditions were the best of the bunch, the show's talent pool this season could be pretty thin.

The ''Idol" auditions held in the Hub in October were finally broadcast by Fox last night, and it's hard to see a scenario whereby any of the folks featured in the hourlong episode wind up being the next Kelly Clarkson.

Of the 175 contestants chosen to square off in Hollywood starting tonight, 28 were plucked from the crowd that showed up in the fall at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. One, dubbed ''all-American girl" on last night's show, is Wrentham's Ayla Brown, daughter of Channel 5 news anchor Gail Huff and state Senator Scott Brown.

A statuesque 17-year-old who'll attend Boston College next year on a basketball scholarship, Brown impressed Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson enough to advance to Los Angeles. Tart-tongued Simon Cowell, the third judge, called her performance ''robotic" and ''empty," but he was overruled. (Told afterward that Cowell had rejected her daughter, Huff exclaimed, ''He said no to my baby?!")

In fact, none of the winners featured on last night's show won unanimous support: Not Rebecca O'Donahue of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., whose look Cowell clearly liked, but whose voice he considered unremarkable; not Tatiana Ward of Hatfield, Pa., who rubbed the judges the wrong way by choosing the chestnut ''My Cheri Amour"; and not even baby-faced Kevin Covais, the 16-year-old from Levittown, N.Y., who Cowell concluded could appeal only to people over 80.

As always, the judges delighted in telling the truly awful acts to go away, and there were no shortage of awful acts in Boston. The most awful may have been Michael Sandecki, a spastic, wetheaded Clay Aiken wannabe who was deemed to be ''Boston's most annoying man." Thankfully, he was not invited to LA.

MARK SHANAHAN