LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tim Urban couldn't get any satisfaction on "American Idol."

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michael "Big Mike" Lynche made Kara DioGuardi cry and turned the rest of the "American Idol" judges giddy with a moving performance of "This Woman's Work."

Lynche, a mountain of a guy who lives up to his nickname, performed last among the eight male semifinalists Wednesday and emerged as the star of the Fox TV show.

"You come out with an incredibly difficult song to sing, and you 100 percent nailed it," said Simon Cowell. "Not just the best performance of the night, it was the best performance of all these live shows so far."

The eight female semifinalists performed Tuesday, with the top six vote-getters from the men's and women's groups to be announced Thursday.

"It's amazing. You were amazing," DioGuardi said. "It's your life right now, it's your respect for your wife, what you've gone through. ... It brought me to tears."

The other contestants, who may have been glad they didn't have to follow Lynche, picked up a mixture of praise and criticism.

NEW YORK (AP) — Cablevision and ABC were negotiating a deal Monday that tentatively ended a dispute over fees and restored millions of viewers' access to the Academy Awards telecast in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut shortly after the broadcast began.

The two sides, who had been hammering at each other for days in the media, said a deal had been reached Sunday night, nearly 15 minutes into the Oscar awards broadcast.

Neither side released details about the deal, and it was unclear how permanent it would be.

Rebecca Campbell, president and general manager of WABC-TV, said the companies had "reached an agreement in principle."

"Given this movement, we're pleased to announce that ABC7 will return to Cablevision households while we work to complete our negotiations," she said in a statement.

Cablevision Systems Corp. spokesman Charles Schueler welcomed ABC's programming back to the cable operator's lineup and seemed to praise the deal.

"It is a deal that is fair to our customers and in line with our other programming agreements," he said.

A stalemate in the dispute had led ABC's parent company, the Walt Disney Co., to pull its programming from the cable operator's subscribers at midnight Saturday. The move, which imperiled viewers' access to the highly rated Oscar show broadcast, marked the first time in a decade that a major broadcast station went dark in a dispute with a cable company.

The signal was switched on at 8:43 p.m. Sunday, Cablevision said. The awards show began at 8:30 p.m.

Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger was seen in the Oscar audience, about a minute after Cablevision announced it had reached a deal to get the telecast on the air.

The cable operator's subscribers had been scrambling to hook up antennas or find live TV on the Internet to watch the Academy Awards after the signal was switched off.

The companies traded blame for the stalemate ahead of one of the most-watched nights of television.

NEW YORK (AP) — College student John Park and gospel singer Jermaine Sellers were sent home Thursday along with female semifinalists Michelle Delamor and Haeley Vaughn as "American Idol" voters trimmed the field to 16 rivals on the Fox singing competition show.