TVSquad

The sheer volume of coverage surrounding Michael Jackson's untimely death has reached such a solid density that you can actually take a hammer to it (and believe me, I've tried).

The man's death was tragic and newsworthy, and the recent memorial was also deserving of some extreme attention, but some of the bits and pieces almost scream for the story to stick around. Mark my words, Michael Jackson will replace Jesus and the Virgin Mary as the holy face that some yahoo will see in their morning batch of French toast.

One of those stories reached such a fever pitch that the network that spawned it tried to put a stop to it. An overly vigilant CNN viewer spotted a shadowy figure walking across the camera during Larry King's visit to Neverland Ranch. The video found its way to YouTube where it garnered over 4 million hits and sparked a wave of news coverage not seen since, well, Michael Jackson's death.

In the wake of his surprise death yesterday, the networks scrambled to cobble together retrospectives of Michael Jackson's life and works and get them on the air as quickly as possible. I expect we'll see more carefully planned tributes coming down the road. But none perhaps more bizarre than Fox's proposed tribute to the King of Pop, coming up this Monday, June 29 at 8 ET.

They've decided to air an encore of the Michael Jackson themed episode of American Idol from this past season. In it, the Top 13 contestants performed from Jackson's catalogue. It's a bizarre choice, because despite a few good performances, notably from Kris Allen, Alexis Grace and Allison Iraheta, most of the performances were either okay or downright terrible. I'd think you'd want some good singing of perhaps some of his better known works to honor the man.