For the last three American Idol seasons, there has been one question that has been asked more than any other by those who blog and cover the show: have we seen all the talent there is to see? With all these talent and singing competitions out there, has the talent pool run dry? In other words, is there anyone left in the country for us to discover?

Another singing competition, The Voice, has given us a clearcut answer on this issue: there are plenty of people with good voices out there for us to discover. The level of talent the show has found to entertain us this season is amazing and should make for an excellent competition.

Since we know there are still plenty of people out there worth listening to, why aren’t we seeing them on American Idol, the show that started it all?

I know it’s easy to kick a show when it’s down. And despite the fact that it will still lead all other shows in the ratings when this season is done, there is no question that American Idol is down. Even The Voice‘s Adam Levine took an easy shot when he told a contestant that the “contestants we aren’t turning our chairs around for could win American Idol.” But the truth is, AI has problems that they need to address. And looking at what some of the other singing competition shows are doing, like The Voice, could help fix the show before it’s too late.

After the jump, see what I think American Idol needs to do to help re-energize itself.

Talent
If you watched The Voice during their two weeks of audition shows, you saw that even the acts the coaches didn’t pick had, at a minimum, decent voices. Some of them even had very good voices. What you didn’t see was mediocre singers or even joke auditions. In fact, I feel The Voice went too far with this during auditions by not showing us a few more of the auditioners who didn’t make it. Part of the thrill with this show was hearing the acts sing and wondering whether any of the judges would press their buttons.

In contrast, American Idol seems to relish in torturing us with auditioners who can’t sing a single note outside of the shower, and who probably shouldn’t be allowed to sing inside their own shower either. Long stretches of audition shows are often spent focusing on the non-talent instead of the ones that actually have talent.

This doesn’t mean that I want American Idol to get rid of the absolute train wrecks that have shown up on our screens over the years. William Hung started this craze off in Season 3 with his audition of “She Bangs.” Since then, we have been treated to classic train wrecks like Season 5′s Renaldo Lapuz (“You Are My Brother”), Season 8′s Akilah Askew (“I came from the wrong rectum”), and Season 9′s General Larry Platt (“Pants on the Ground”). These total disasters were talked about for months, and in William Hung’s case, years, after their auditions.

Sob Stories
One of American Idol‘s trademarks is the sob story. Each year, we wonder just how big the sob stories will be. And each year, the sob stories seem to get bigger and bigger. The first sob story I remember was Season 4′s Anthony Fedorov, who had a tracheotomy as a toddler and was not expected to ever talk again, much less sing. In Season 8 we were treated to Danny Gokey’s late wife who passed away just four weeks before the auditions. This season, Season 10, we had Chris Medina, whose fiancée suffered a brain injury from a car accident just a couple of weeks before they were to be married.

The problem is, many of the sob stories we are shown come with contestants who are mediocre singers at best. It makes us feel like the American Idol producers are looking for sob stories first, vocal talent second. And that shouldn’t be the case. On The Voice, a few minor sob stories were shared with us. But we never got a feeling that the auditioner was only there because of the sob story. They always had a voice to share with us as well. This is the way it should be.

American Idol needs to focus on finding talent first, stories to share second. Whoever the people are that judge the auditioners in the first several rounds of auditions need to be retrained to only focus on the voice and personality. Find the people who can sing and will want to make us tune in each week to hear them. Once you’ve found those people to put in front of the judges, then look to see if there is a story to share with us.

Face Time
With only a couple of exceptions, viewers of The Voice were treated to plenty of face time with the auditioners. From a pre-audition video package, to Carson Daly talking to them, to the amount of time they spent singing, to the interaction with the coaches afterwards, we as viewers really got a chance to get to know most of the acts. And even in the Battle Round, we got to know these acts even more as we watched them prepare for their battle.

American Idol, on the other hand, has a nasty habit of presenting us a Top 24 with contestants we have barely seen in the previous weeks. There have even been a few times where America’s first introduction to a contestant was when that contestant was announced as being in the Top 24. That is something that should never, ever happen.

For years on the radio show I have asked for Hollywood Week to be extended by at least two shows, if not more. This Hollywood Week is something that the other shows don’t have, and it allows us, the viewers, an opportunity to really get to know who these people are. Past Hollywood Weeks have given us some great TV and water cooler moments, like just about anything Tatiana Del Toro did in Season 8. But under no circumstances should we ever be given a Top 24 that has contestants we’ve barely seen or not seen at all.

Music
For the last couple of seasons, I’ve mentioned on the radio show that it may be time to get rid of the a cappella auditions on American Idol and allow contestants to try out with music. The auditions on The Voice, as well as on most every other talent show, allows the acts to try out with music.

Not every singer can do their best singing a cappella, especially alone. A cappella is best done, in my opinion, in groups, where you can feed off the other members in the group. Yet American Idol still has contestants sing this way not only during the auditions, but the first time they sing on stage in Hollywood Week. For someone who would otherwise be a great singer, this could spell the end before they ever get started.

Brevity
The Voice wasted very little time getting to the Battle Round stage of their competition. Two two-hour audition shows was all it took to get to the meat of the competition. While I would have preferred one more audition show, so we could have seen more of the acts that didn’t get a coach to press their button, you can’t complain too much about a show that doesn’t waste its time getting to the part of the competition that really matters.

One of the biggest gripes I hear from AI fans each year is that the audition process takes too long. Most years we get six to eight audition shows, many of which are two hours long. In addition, we are bored to tears because many of the audition shows are filled with too many singers who can’t sing and train wrecks that are simply more nauseating than fun to watch.

As I said earlier, American Idol has something that none of the other shows have: a Hollywood Week. This is where the competition really starts in earnest for this show. Cutting the audition process to four two-hour shows covered in a two-week period would allow the show to not only more quickly get to the meat of the show, but it would also allow the show to expand Hollywood Week by two weeks. Doing so would likely get the fans more involved, especially as they get a chance to get to know their favorites. This would really give us something to talk about when a personal favorite doesn’t eventually make the Top 24.

So there it is. Five areas that American Idol could learn from The Voice and their other competition to improve the show. I truly believe these changes would vastly improve AI without sacrificing its identity or making it too similar to the other shows. And I think it would add life to a show that, for the last few seasons, has been relatively lifeless.

What do you think? Would you like to see American Idol adopt some of all of these changes? Do you think there are other changes the show could make to improve itself? Either way, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Don’t forget to watch NBC’s The Voice tonight at 10 PM ET / 9 CT, and join us over on IdolBlogLive.com during the show for live blogging and to interact with other viewers in the Shoutbox. And make sure to join Sir Darryl and me on Wednesday and Thursday at 11 PM ET / 10 CT for the Idol Radio Show, where we will talk about both this week’s The Voice and American Idol.