Bay, Pretty good and intelligent suggestions except for the audience ballot proposal.
Here's my half-assed intelligent refute .......
Most in the audience are merely there to support their son, daughter, husband, wife, fellow gym member, or loved one.
The vast majority of the others in the audience are fans who prefer one contestant over another merely because of the fan obsession/association.
Others are there who have no idea who should win or who should should lose, nor even have no right to be up there.
So asking them to cast ballots would simply fuck the system up more so than YOU THINK it may be today.
...... a while back there was a well known and well respected promoter (Wally some-who) who attempted to promote contests in SoCal in which the audience would determine the winners by their appaluse.... even to the extent of using an official Applause-O -Meter of some sorts.
It didn't work well because the weakest tweeb on that stage won simply because he got more of his ping-pong playing buds to buy more tickets to the event than any of the other contestants who clapped loudly on his behalf.
Other than that, I tend to agree with ya.