» My Eyes! Scandals on American Idol Options

[PandemoniumTV]

The fact that there are no such indicators from Adam's fanbase is just that -- well, there are no indicators from Adam's fanbase. Which doesn't prove or disprove anything.

That's true. On one hand, it could mean that Adam fans (like me) want to milk it so that AI is forced to re-do the voting, or that they want to lay down and wait for their moment. Also:

You'd think that it would be easy enough to dig up some A, T & T spokesperson to say that they did, indeed, give out similar phones and assistance at some Adam Lambert parties just to end the whole stupid thing.

That's a good point.

[blackwing]

Also, all the instructions on fan sites and flyers on earth don't mean beans if you don't have an AT&T phone, but on the other hand, if you're given one....

But I still don't think it makes any difference. If the article is to be believed, there were a total of 80 phones at these Kris parties that AT&T loaned out to be used to text. Adam lives in San Diego, which is a much bigger market than Arkansas. Theoretically, there is absolutely no reason why Adam shouldn't have had at least 80 more people at his party that had an AT&T phone. He had a bigger population base to draw from and, considering it is San Diego, the people there are likely richer than the people in Arkansas and therefore are able to afford iPhones with unlimited texting. Adam's fans at his party should have greatly been able to outtext Kris' fans at his party.

Is there any reason why AT&T would prefer Kris over Adam?

If the article is to be believed, it's not like they "decided" to favor Kris and only were going to give out phones at his party. It said they attended because they were asked. I would think that if they were asked by Adam fans to attend his party, they would have.

[wythany]

I dialed pretty much constantly for the first hour after the East Coast broadcast, for Kris. I got busy signals about half the time, another 10-15% of the time never connected to either the "Thank you for voting" message or a busy signal. Just hung up and redialed after it was clear the call wasn't going through. Oh! and typing that reminds me, I also got some "call cannot be completed as dialed" messages -- and since I was using the Redial button that didn't seem reasonable.
I figure everybody who was voting for either candidate experienced busy signals, incompleted calls, and other glitches. So it likely all evened out. Maybe if Kris had lost I wouldn't be feeling so sanguine.

[mcg2000]

I never got my text confirmation from AT&T for Kris, so I don't even know if my texts went thru. I wonder if other texters had that problem. I was able to get thru with my landline a lot throughout the four hours.

[jedipancake]

I just have this feeling that if the Adam fans who promulgated this controversy continue to push, they may get the voting results, and they will discover that Kris won by a margin that would render any power texting on a few free phones inconsequential, or that Kris could have won on phone-in votes alone. Because Idol did not publicize any voting statistics for the final 2, I can only imagine that it was fairly lopsided, since they love to boast about razor thin margins when they can.

This post has been edited by jedipancake: May 28, 2009 @ 1:33 am.

[BarkaSnark]

Yawn... appears to be a non scandal and thread has deteriorated into fan based finger pointing.

Bring on the congressional hearings! I really don't care who won, I just want to see the machine behind the curtain exposed!

[Thegirliscrazy]

You'd think that it would be easy enough....

Of course it's easy enough when someone wants to dig.

The press has no motivation to really dig down deep and clear this up. They're getting too much press.

Idol ptb apparently feel no motivation to dig b/c they would have put in more effort - hell, any effort - to shut this down quickly and let Kris have an untarnished win. Instead, they have let it snowball and only released short official statements after the fact.

Adam fans have no motivation to dig for something like that b/c that only justifies their guy's loss, which defeats the purpose of being a fan.

Kris fans are just too busy trying to defend their guy's talent and worthiness of the title to dig right now.

So no, there will be no digging. And it's rather unfortunate. Also, let me point out how ironic it is that a state so often stereotyped as being, how shall we say, not the brightest stars in the sky are now being accused of being so technologically savvy that they just managed to outwit every Adam fan in the country by virtue of some AT&T reps coming in and assisting on some powervoting.

The issue at hand if there is one SHOULD be the presence of AT&T, but there seems to be an equal or maybe even greater focus on the powervoting itself, which is a moot point b/c all fanbases do that. Thinking back on previous seasons, you truly can't crack the top three or four without that kind of fervent fanbase even if it's a seemingly small one (Syesha notwithstanding).

I just have this feeling that if the Adam fans who promulgated this controversy continue to push, they may get the voting results, and they will discover that Kris won by a margin that would render any power texting on a few free phones inconsequential, or that Kris could have won on phone-in votes alone.

I commented in the Grassy Knoll a few days ago that based on the years that Idol has revealed the margin (1, 2, 3, and 7), the greatest spreads have been seasons 1 and 7 (approximately 56%-44% both years). Due to this, my speculation is that Idol doesn't like to reveal the spread if it's greater than 60/40.

I'm sure Idol has considered releasing the AR vote totals. But Idol can't realistically release JUST Arkansas' vote totals. If they did, regardless of the number, Kris fans would demand that ALL vote totals be revealed for complete transparency. If Idol did this it would reveal the margin of win, and if that margin of win is large enough that Kris would have won even without AR's votes then this whole "controversy" is null and void - but a large margin also implies that not only did Kris handily beat Adam, but that Adam would not have won in a head-on finale with most people. It could have been Danny or maybe even Allison and he probably have still lost. This lessens Adam's perceived marketability if it turns out he just wasn't pulling in the votes (but OTOH it would probably push the controversy back in the homophobia direction b/c the media is just that unable to let shit go).

I really have no pity for AI or for the media's apparent bitterness over Adam's loss. That's what they get for putting the world on Adam's shoulders. They have no one but themselves to blame for voters eventually pushing back and choosing the unassuming underdog that wasn't seen as having a chance. But instead of acknowledging, "okay, maybe we pushed too hard, maybe we shouldn't have hyped this one guy up so much that if he ends up not winning it actually threatens to delegitimize the entire franchise in one fell swoop," or hell, even just saying "well that Kris guy clearly has his fans and that's cool; even without the win Adam will be fine," they want to play the blame game (homophobia! whitebread Americans with equally whitebread taste! Arkansas! AT&T!) and try to discredit the actual winner. For that, I only feel sorry for Kris, b/c he doesn't deserve this bullshit.

[mickeybordentwo]

The msnbc.com take on it is that the scandal doesn't matter. Geography is destiny.

[winterwhitewolf]

FYI, this has attacted enough attention that the totally unscientific daily poll on CNN's home page is "Should shows like 'American Idol' go to a 'one person-one vote' format?" "Yes" is leading the way with 87% of the vote at the moment.

I (and many, many others) have been saying this for years. It just goes to show that AI is all about the TV show (Yay, we got almost 100 million votes!!!!) and NOT about the singing competition. If it were truly looking to find the person who will sell the most CD's, they would limit the voting to no more than 5 per phone number, and not allow texting. The way the system works now, 1 person can cast 1,000 votes for a Contestant A. 999 people can cast 1 vote apiece for Contestant B. Contestant A wins. But Contestant A sells one CD. Contestant B sells 999. Gross oversimplification, sure, but the point stands. AI clearly doesn't give a shit about figuring out who sells, it just wants a highly rated TV show.

And I understand the obvious argument about "Well, if you don't happen to have an AT&T phone you're SOL; sorry; go get one." I get that part. But when the phones are provided by AT & T to some people and not others, that adds a whole other spin to the situation.

I agree. Do I think that 80 phones made such a huge difference to the voting that it should be redone? No, that's just silly. HOWEVER, I DO think that these overeager Arkansas AT&T employees should be fired for, basically, being stupid. When your employer is a major sponsor of the show, and you as an employee do something that gives the appearance of favoritism, you have screwed up in a major way.

Had one been provided for you with instructions on how to send 10 votes in one shot, you'd have likely taken advantage of it.

This.


From the msnbc.com article:

Moreover, conspiracy theorists, Allen’s performance of that awful final song, “No Boundaries” outranks Adam Lambert’s fantastic rendition of “Mad World” on iTunes, according to the ranking for single download for the week ending May 25.

Weak argument, considering that Adam's first version of "Mad World" had been available on iTunes for several weeks already. I mean, I love me some Adam, but I certainly didn't feel like I needed to spend another 99 cents on a track that I had already purchased weeks ago.

This post has been edited by winterwhitewolf: May 28, 2009 @ 7:41 am.

[TWoP Tennison]

This thread is being closed for a while because rather than discussing the show or the actual "incident" related to the show, it's turned into a bunch of finger-pointing and fan vs. fan arguing.

I'm re-opening the thread. I don't have time right now to delete all the posts that caused this thread to be closed, so please don't take their presence as an endorsement of what's OK to post in here. Discuss the scandal and how it pertains to the show, and vice versa, but analyzing how bitter and/or crazy are the fans of X performer is best left to sites that don't care about discussions devolving into petty and/or repetitive fights.

This post has been edited by TWoP Tennison: May 28, 2009 @ 12:20 pm.

[bm232]

But the NY Times article implies, through evasive and vague language, that *only* Kris Allen watch parties received AT&T phones. It offers no proof of this statement, and I can only conclude that this is because the journalist could not find any such proof. If he *had*, then he would have said so, because that only strengthens and validates the point of his article.

It shocks me that there's no die-hard proof, but I personally believe that it shows incompetent journalism skills & a possible motive.
Is there any reason why AT&T would prefer Kris over Adam? If not, then I have to fully agree with the above quote.

PandemoniumTV, I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying--my point was that, IMO, this *does* show incompetent journalism skills.

From where I'm standing, this is a reporter wanting to sell a story, and using misleading language to imply that he has proof for such a story, when he doesn't. It's extremely shoddy journalism. The problem is that the rest of the press is now acting as if the original NY Times article actually gave concrete evidence of voting unfairness, when it didn't.

I can't think of any reason why AT&T would prefer Kris over Adam. I can't think of any reason why the *show* would prefer Kris over Adam, when they've been pushing Adam all season, with Simon actually *asking* America to vote for him on Top 3 night and the other judges chanting, "Vote! Vote! Vote!"

Of course it's easy enough when someone wants to dig.

The press has no motivation to really dig down deep and clear this up. They're getting too much press.

Idol ptb apparently feel no motivation to dig b/c they would have put in more effort - hell, any effort - to shut this down quickly and let Kris have an untarnished win. Instead, they have let it snowball and only released short official statements after the fact.

Adam fans have no motivation to dig for something like that b/c that only justifies their guy's loss, which defeats the purpose of being a fan.

Exactly. This is what makes the original journalist so irresponsible. He should have done the digging himself before publishing that article.

The only way to find out if AT&T reps were present at an Adam Lambert watch party is to contact either AT&T or the watch party organizers and ask. This is problematic because:

1) The AT&T reps can always lie and say they weren't present. Seeing as this could even get them fired, they most likely *will* lie.

2) The watch party organizers are Adam fans. As thegirliscrazy points out, they'd prefer it if this story kept going.

This post has been edited by bm232: May 28, 2009 @ 3:26 pm.

[BadLilSister]

More on the scandal du jour.

[PandemoniumTV]

PandemoniumTV, I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying--my point was that, IMO, this *does* show incompetent journalism skills.

And I agree. I understood your point, but I guess my phrasing was incoherent & not reflective of my opinion. My apologies.

I'm wondering how this will affect the voting for next season. I have thought for a while that internet voting would be a good idea, but there are many downsides.
AT&T 's presence on American Idol seems to have only created scandal, as the news will show.

Adam Lambert's version of "Mad World" shows up at 11 & 81 on iTunes, and his version of "No Boundaries" is at 45. He isn't shown on the 100 top songs as much as Kris (who shows up at numbers 3, 8, 57, and 78), but it shows that his fans are still buying his music. Maybe this whole scandal will get the two of them some more downloads. They deserve it.

[bm232]

And I agree. I understood your point, but I guess my phrasing was incoherent & not reflective of my opinion. My apologies.

No need to apologize! Communication on the Interwebs is complicated. :-)

Maybe this whole scandal will get the two of them some more downloads. They deserve it.

Amen to that. Though I don't know if anything good can come out of this mess...

[Constantinople]

From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette

At the Peabody watch party, Bobbie Kierna of Greenbrier voted 10,840 times on one of the phones provided by AT&T at a roped-off area with signs advertising it as a “Texting Zone.” She said she stayed until 11:48 p.m. to vote for Allen, who was in school with her daughter at the University of Central Arkansas. Producers, AT&T say Idol voting fair, verified

I wish AT&T provided me a phone, gratis.

Edited because it's the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, not the Arkansas Democrat

This post has been edited by Constantinople: May 28, 2009 @ 5:37 pm.