Posted on 05/16/2004 10:10:24 PM PDT by Dont Mention the War
Dee Law has been a diehard fan of Fox's runaway hit American Idol since it started three seasons ago.
But as the show speeds toward its May 26 conclusion with three songbirds left, the 40-year-old Pennsylvania homemaker couldn't care less about the outcome. A Clay Aiken fan, she lost faith in the process after making a shocking discovery last year: No matter how often she tried, she couldn't place her vote.
Law says she tried to dial "five or six hundred times" on the final night of competition but hasn't tried since. "I'm not gonna get suckered into voting again," she says. "Why should we sit here and waste two hours of our time when our votes aren't going to be counted?"
American Idol, the wildly successful talent show based on the democratic premise that viewers cast ballots for a winner, has a serious voting problem. Interviews with telephone companies, data consultants, federal agencies, and fans expose a flawed system in which tens of millions of votes are potentially lost. Indeed, evidence shows that the only people choosing the next American Idol are the ones lucky enough to get through - or skilled enough to get around - tremendously overtaxed phone lines.
While overzealous fans have accused Fox of tampering with results, one fact is indisputable: Technology is thwarting democracy on American Idol. Power-dialers can skew the vote. Text-messagers have an unfair advantage. And potential hackers have a powerful new incentive to alter the vote tallies: betting on the outcome through Internet gambling sites. Despite fans' repeated accusations of inaccurate results, Fox is sticking with a voting system vulnerable to serious manipulation and tampering.
A consistent ratings leader, American Idol became a cultural phenomenon overnight, changing the fortunes of the Fox network, rocketing unknowns to stardom, and capturing the public's hearts, minds - and wallets, if CD sales are counted. In many ways, its colossal success has created a massive headache for a network trying to convince viewers that they are choosing the next American Idol.
Critics say it's akin to winning a prize on radio: The caller with the best speed-dialer and text messaging gets through. "I am starting to feel like a fool for believing in the show after last week," one viewer wrote in an April 24 complaint to the Federal Communications Commission.
Despite repeated requests, News Corp's Fox Broadcasting Co. declined to comment. "We are going to pass on this piece," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
Last season, when Ruben Studdard won the second competition, host Ryan Seacrest proudly announced that the previous night's voting had resulted in a virtual photo finish.
The two singers received a total of 24 million votes, with viewers urged to vote as often as they like. But on the same night, Verizon, the nation's largest phone company (which handles 1.5 billion calls daily), had a call volume that was up by 116 million calls. Although it's impossible to know where each call went, according to Verizon's Daniel Diaz Zapata, "there was no obvious reason for all those calls, other than American Idol."
SBC also reported a call volume on May 20, 2003, up by 115 million calls, which means more than 230 million potential votes never got through, much less got counted. Together, Verizon and SBC handle nearly one-third of the long-distance market.
In reality, no phone system has the capacity to handle that kind of call volume. A logjam is inevitable and starts at the local level. AT&T, along with Telescope UK, is in charge of the Idol tabulations. "The real issue is not with the long-distance carrier network" but with jammed local phone lines, says Linda Lungo, vice president of AT&T's domestic business development.
"You've got to look at how fast the inbound phone system can receive messages," says Tom Cobbs, Database Systems Corp., which designs complex telephone and computer networks for companies. "It's a bandwidth problem. There's only so much volume they can run through that pipe at one time."
This means that, no matter how many people vote, only a limited number can get through in any two-hour period. In the second season's Studdard-Aiken contest, each of the two contestants had his own phone number, and each received roughly half of the more than 24 million votes. The winner was decided by a statistically insignificant margin: a mere 134,000 votes, or less than 1% of the total.
In the latest controversy, Jasmine Trias from Hawaii advanced while frontrunner LaToya London was knocked out. When fans howled over another voting glitch - this time alleging that more callers were allowed from Hawaii, six hours behind New York, Fox released a statement: "The producers and network have gone to great lengths to ensure the integrity of the voting process on American Idol. America votes, an independent company calculates the tally, and the show reports those results."
But while some fans are getting blocked, others are guaranteed to be counted. No such capacity problem exists with text messaging. Of the 24 million votes recorded for Studdard and Aiken, 2.5 million were AT&T Wireless text-messaging votes, which cost 10¢ apiece. Every one of them got through and was recorded. Why? Cynics charge that it's because AT&T is one of the show's sponsors and stands to make a bundle.
But text messaging is digital (unlike phone lines, which are analog) and simply doesn't have the same traffic jams. A text message is also time-coded, meaning that all of the votes messaged during the two-hour period can be lined up like jets on a runway and eventually recorded. "Manual phones have a very limited capacity because the voice takes up so much of the phone line," says Kurt Knutsson, a high-tech expert on TV's Cyberguy, syndicated in 114 markets. "Text takes up so little: It's like a whisper versus a presidential inauguration."
So, as ordinary phone lines are being maxed out, says Knutsson, text messaging could theoretically swing the vote - a vote that may already be compromised.
A year ago, Fox answered charges that power-dialers, also known as "phone phreakers," were skewing the Idol vote. In response to questions from the Associated Press, producers acknowledged that about 100 "phreaks," using fast Internet connections and powerful computer autodialing software, were casting thousands of votes with the touch of a button. "They're all over the country, and they tend to be slamming the system at all ends," Michael Eaton, vice president of home entertainment for FremantleMedia, the show's London-based producer, told the AP. Eaton insisted that there were safeguards in place to sniff out power-dialers and throw out their votes.
But that doesn't mean the power-dialers aren't affecting the outcome. Says Knutsson, "They're not only using the system to vote for whomever they want, they're using it to tie up the lines so that other people can't vote."
He says he laughed when he heard producers say the problem was confined to a handful of people. "This is thousands upon thousands of moderately tech-savvy fans who really get emotionally compelled to do something about who they want to win. It could be anybody with a computer, a modem, and a phone line. "
Phone phreakers have already tested the tactic with Ticketmaster, Knutsson says. For sold-out concerts, they attempt to tie up phone lines at Ticketmaster while a cohort tries to buy available tickets at the record store.
Another real danger, Cobbs points out, is that someone could hack into the database containing the overall vote tallies. "It literally takes one line of code and two seconds to change the number to whatever you want."
Who would go through all that trouble? Critics say follow the money. Today, viewers can bet on American Idol online. One site, Bet365.com, offers 6/4 odds for contestant Fantasia Barrino and 11/2 for Diana Degarmo. Intertops.com offers 5/2 for Barrino, 5/1 for Degarmo, and 6/1 for Jasmine Trias. Credit cards are welcome.
But the odds-makers aren't the only ones trying to make money off the show. In March, the Federal Trade Commission lowered the boom on Telemarketing Inc., a Utah firm trying to cash in on misdialed American Idol votes. According to the settlement in which the company was forced to pay $40,000 in fines, an astonishing 25,000 callers dialed the wrong number. Prior to the show, Telemarketing bought phone numbers similar to those for Idol, then told viewers who misdialed that they had to call a second 900 number to actually place their "vote." The fees for those "votes" ranged from $1.99 to $2.97 per call.
Meanwhile, the FCC has received more than a thousand complaints (69 e-mails sent to the FCC directly, 1,140 sent to Fox and copied to the FCC) about legitimate Idol voting. Most of them are from last season and center on the inability of Aiken fans to get through. The agency doesn't make public whether it is considering a formal investigation. But the trigger for such an investigation, according to the FCC's Rosemary Kimball, would be clear evidence of the show's intentionally "fixing" the numbers.
Whether a formal investigation is launched or not, the discontent over the voting is getting louder. as fans protest on Web sites, in e-mails, and by water coolers.
Dee Law says she has deliberately kept her distance this season, refusing to become emotionally involved in the show.
With such a lucrative franchise on the line, fans wonder why Fox isn't doing something to address the problem. A month before the finale, on April 27, this reporter tested the system by trying to vote for Barrino every 10 minutes for the two full hours - a total of 12 times - and couldn't get through. The same was true on May 4.
Producers said last year that they were considering instituting online voting, but nothing ever came of it.
So, why not limit the vote to one per person? The answer may be money. Says AT&T's Lungo, "One of the requirements [AT&T and Fox] discussed early on was whether they wanted it to be one vote per person or whether it didn't matter. And they said, 'It doesn't matter, vote as many times as you want.' It would be more expensive [to limit the voting] because we have to tally it and eliminate all of the [multiple] votes."
But it may start costing Fox far more not to overhaul the system. When loyal viewers like Law start turning away, that's fewer sets of eyes watching the screen and fewer consumers buying the CDs. "They should have it so that you have to log in and register and you could only enter once," she says. "That, to me, would be fair. They need to change it so that every vote counts."
This is worse than Floriduh!
I think Fantasia is going all the way this year. I like American Idol, it makes great backround TV. It's the closest thing we've currently got to an old fashioned variety show.
The other two got slightly over 5,000 each.
Even if all 1.3 million votes from Hawaii were for here that still leaves her way ahead of the bottom two.
It's George W. Bush's fault.
Bump for later reading.
They thought they were voting for Al Gore.
Wonder if the military votes for American Idol are getting through? I doubt that they have the time or effort to care. Some of their votes didn't get counted in the last presidential election.
I think our country needs to get their priorities in order. People seem to be more consumed with the American Idol vote than what's going on in our political elections.
Maybe "Sir" Elton John could make sure take up the cause of making sure our military votes are counted this November.
Seriously, who gave this foppish, obnoxious git the right to issue judgments on the aesthetic tastes of an American audience?
If you don't like the way they voted, then eliminate the component of the show that relies on audience participation you irritating limey!
I think this guy needs a serious attitude adjustment.
This woman needs to get a life.
bttt
My favorite part is that you can bet on this at off shore books. How great is that.
I believe the three things that the wife and I are finding so funny about all of this are:
The so-called Judges. They select 32 contestants out of many thousand. They proclaim these are the best. Then the home audiance votes for who they believe the top 12 are, then the home audiance continue to vote down who they believe is best of the contestants the judges have already said deserved to be there. Yet week after week the judges tell contestants they are the best, or they don't deserve to be there, etc.
The Public Uproar: It's amazing at how tightly wound up people get over this show and become so outraged when their favorite is voted off. So we see a 15 year old boy receiving death threats and now a Hawaiian girl being called a "dog eating, flat faced yellow *itch". Why, because more people liked her then liked their favorite?
Teenie Booper Vote: Bottom line, if you look at who gets the boot and who stays, it's very apparent that teenie boopers are the biggest fans of the show. And while some people may think their opinion shouldn't matter as much as their own, those teenie boopers are going to be buying the CDs so get over it.
I'm pretty neutral over the actual talent, however, I will admit that I cannot stand Fantasia...one Macy Gray is one too many for me. I'm not into the nasal screeching.
i stopped watching after week seven because my husband and i decided to drop television... (although i continued to vote for George Huff--but he's out of the competition now, so i've stopped voting too)... but when i would call and get a busy signal i assumed that meant NO vote... and i never waited until the recording said, "thank you for voting for contestant number whatever," before i would go on and vote again...
i don't see how this is a big deal... of course, if you cannot get through, it doesn't count... it always seems that busy signals are a good sign--and totally open lines tend to be for contestants that no one is calling for--so they tend to be the ones who are dropped from the competition...
how can you forget Carol Roberts? she was one of the officials in Florida who overlooked the recounting of ballots, and who determined if a chad was hanging, pregnant, and that those counted for Gore, but not for Bush...
when my husband first joined FR, Carol Roberts was his chosen sign-in name... however, once the election was all settled and people forgot all about hanging chads and Carol Roberts, freepers began thinking he was a woman and his real name was Carol Roberts... haha!
I doubt that. According to the San Bernardino County Sun, there was a BIG boost in calls in Hawaii:
One phone company's records might hold clues to why her weeping proved unwarranted.Of the 29 states in Verizon's local territory, only New York and California logged more calls on its network than Hawaii after the show, a Verizon spokesman said Thursday. California and New York are among the most populous states in the nation; Hawaii is among the least.
That, I think, shows what happened.
The viewers should be asked to vote for the singer they want to see GONE rather than the singer they want to stay. This would prevent the cults of personality voting, the statewide popular "daughter" votes, and the sympathy votes for poor singers when the voter thinks the better singers are "safe" because others will be voting for them. It is the latter that I think caused Jennifer Hudson's demise.
In other words, the audience could only vote AGAINST someone, not FOR someone. This would make for a much more honest vote.
I agree that people take this thing much too seriously. Personally, I'm waiting for the premiere of this new, parody show based upon American Idol.
In this show-which is the exact inverse of American Idol-the least talented contestants are moved to the front of the line.
I second your comment vis-a-vis Macy Gray. However, she does play a convincing drug addicted gang-banger in the remarkable film, "Training Day."
Crap! I was thinking about this American Idol stuff. Duh!
I guess the network is lying to coverup for the conspiracy.
Yes, I know. Someone already pointed out my stupidity. As I said, I was thinking about this laughable TV show that has more people outraged then elections do.
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