I think it would be really hardto judge musicians unless it was one on one. I can\'t imagine how any good judging could come out of a field of 12 contestants.
I think you\'re on to something here.
They should use the same 3-minutes-a-drummer format just to seed them, then put them in a bracketed one-on-one tourney. It would be much, much harder to argue against the winner in this format.
Even better, they could seed them and have round-robin head-to-head group play leading into a short bracketed tourney. This would guarantee every drummer at least 4 solos, eliminate time-slot bias, eliminate the bad-beat factor, and give everyone a fair shake.