"Nobody would have said no to two or three of the people that we said yes to"

Simon Cowell is hoping to find the next One Direction on Season 11 of AMERICA’S GOT TALENT.

“My main thing was that I wanted to improve the level of the music acts,” he tells TheTVPage.com.

“I think that is the one thing [the show] hasn’t done as well as we should have.”

AGT has had six singers emerge as champions — Bianca Ryan, Terry Fator, Neal E. Boyd, Kevin Skinner, Michael Grimm, and Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr. — but only Fator, a ventriloquist, has gone on to any measurable success.

“We had one successful singer, Jackie Evancho, and another one who slipped through the net, unfortunately,” Cowell notes. “But I think we have better music talent [this year]. That is the main difference.”

The top-rated NBC variety series seemed to make a concerted effort not to embrace traditional singers when Howard Stern joined the show as a judge in 2013. This year, Cowell promises, “They will have a better shot.”

“It feels like it is going to be a fun show. [I] don’t want to be just like Howard and Howard doesn’t want to be just like me.”

“Nobody would have said no to two or three of the people that we said yes to,” he insists. “I genuinely think they are that good. But look, any show like this always needs good music acts.”

Cowell — who is also the show’s creator and executive producer — joins AGT after a three year hiatus from American television.

He joins judges Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Mel B.

Cowell was last seen as a judge on THE X FACTOR, which ran for three seasons on Fox.

“This felt like the perfect timing, and it’s been a lot of fun,” he says. “It was worth the wait to come back to this.”

AMERICA’S GOT TALENT returns May 31 on NBC.