I turned on the Today show this morning and found myself watching American Idol.

To be specific, Today was airing a package (TV talk for a pre-recorded story voiced by a reporter) on American Idol and the latest developments from the most recent episode — which I can only imagine aired last night.

But Today is on NBC. American Idol, last time I checked, is on Fox.

I don’t know why I have developed such a short fuse when it comes to Today airing fluff. This is the same show that in the early days brought on a chimpanzee in the hopes that its antics would attract kids (and thereby, their parents) every morning. It worked. And it seems to have set a unfortunate precedent over the years that is currently being followed more and more often.

I don’t care about American Idol. Even if I were a fan of the show, I wouldn’t need to get updates on it from a morning show on another network.

I wish NBC would focus more of its daily morning news marathon on news. They’ve stretched Today out to four hours now. If they add one more hour, they’ll have to retitle it, This Afternoon.

Surely they can put crap about American Idol in the later hours so that people trying to get their day started don’t have to sit through it.

I know that the passage of time makes even mediocre things seem better than they ever were, but I swear I remember Today having lots more real news back in the 1980s when it was hosted by Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley.