Idol Judges Show United Front

Songwriter Kara DioGuardi, the newest American Idol judge—and, if passive-aggressive morning radio comments are anything to go on, reputed bane of Paula Abdul's existence—got a taste of the media blitz to come in New York Tuesday morning, when she joined up with her critiquing colleagues for the first time.

And while the 37-year-old new recruit made the most of her first photo op in advance of the show's Big Apple tryouts, her fellow colleagues got in their first sound bites of season eight.

"It's like, you know, having dinner with three people for seven years, and getting quite bored of each other," the ever-diplomatic Simon Cowell told reporters. "So it's having a fourth person, new opinion, I think it's gonna be interesting…And she's cute."

"I know Kara, and she speaks her mind—so she will be speaking her mind," Abdul added.

"That's a nice way of saying she's bitchy," Cowell said, before doing his best to dispel the circulating rumors of judge-on-judge tension.

"We had a picnic last night in the bedroom," he said. "I wore pajamas, the girls wore negligees and we kind of broke the ice."