America’s Got Talent (season 3)

The third season of America’s Got Talent, an American television reality show talent competition, premiered on the NBC network on June 17, 2008. Opera singer Neal E. Boyd was named the winner, on October 1, 2008.

NBC announced in August 2007 that the network had renewed the show for a third season. Preliminary auditions were held in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, and MySpace from January to April. Sharon Osbourne, Piers Morgan and David Hasselhoff returned as judges. Jerry Springer also returned as host. It will also be shown in the United Kingdom on ITV2.

This season, the audition stage became different. This season, the X on the stages (above) and (judges table) matched the ones from Britain’s Got Talent or has been borrowed for this season.

This season started broadcasting live on August 26, 2008.

Top 40

The Top 40 acts performed in four episodes over two weeks. In the next episode following each performance episode, the results were revealed. First, the acts were presented in pairs, one from the top four of the previous episode, one from the bottom four. It was then revealed which of the pair had been eliminated, and which of them remained in the contest. After the top four and the bottom four were fully revealed, the acts in fifth and sixth place were all that remained. At this point these remaining two acts were put to the judges to decide which of them would remain, and which would be eliminated.

The fourth episode of the live performance semifinals was broadcast from Los Angeles, California on September 3, 2008.

Top 20, Results Show

The fifth episode of the live performance semifinals was broadcast from Los Angeles, California on September 9, 2008

Terry Fator made a brief appearance to announce that he would perform the following night, and to announce that the Las Vegas headline show by the winner of the current season would be on October 17.

Acts that were eliminated include:

The results show for the Top 20 performances was broadcast from Los Angeles, California on September 11, 2008.

Top 10

Top 10 Performance Show
The Top 10 episode was broadcast from Los Angeles, California on September 17, 2008.

The results show for the Top 10 performances was broadcast from Los Angeles, California on September 18, 2008.

The episode included a guest performance by Natasha Bedingfield of her new song “Angel”. This time there were no more “Judges Choice” eliminations, and all acts that were eliminated or continued through did so on the audience vote totals.

America’s Got Talent (season 3) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia