lifetime guarantee.....shudder. lifetime guarantee.....shudder. In his new book, Desperate Networks, New York Times TV writer Bill Carter discloses that Fox pays American Idol panelist and co-producer Simon Cowell $36 million a year and that the reason that it doesn't run Idol in the fall has little to do with its post-season baseball coverage and more to do with the fact that Cowell produces a high British reality series called the X-Factor in which he also appears. The book also reveals that in just the four months that it does air, it offers 45 hours hours of programming, while other hit shows air about 24 hours for an entire season