Carrie Underwood has officially made her return to American Idol , but instead of taking viewers by storm on stage, she'll be joining the judging panel. On Wednesday, the former winner of the singing competition show replaced Katy Perry as a judge and joined Luke Bryan , Lionel Richie , and host Ryan Seacrest in official promo photos for the upcoming Season 23 . Underwood's return to the show is historic as she is the first winner to return as a full-time judge.
Carrie Underwood’s career highs — from American Idol to Las Vegas residency American Idol's hidden battle to secure Carrie Underwood before rival show However, returning to the show that launched her career has reportedly come with price, a smaller salary than Perry ever received . Life & Style reports that the 41-year-old country superstar was not ABC 's first choice to replace the Fireworks singer, who left to reignite her music career. The network hired her after she agreed to a salary that is about half of Perry's staggering $25 million per season.
"It's well known internally that Miley Cyrus was the network and the producers’ first choice to replace Katy, but topping Katy’s already-high salary was never on the table with Miley," a source at ABC said. "Katy’s enormous salary was an outlier and it was that high because ABC was asking for a lot of her time away from making music and performing, more time than she had ever given something other than her own pop career," the source added. Perry's massive sal.