Fox has declined comment so far, probably because it’s totally true.
I guess it can be said that they can’t control the phone-in votes, but for one thing, I don’t know that we have any reason to believe that AI actually honors those results if they don’t want to, and for another, the vote is heavily manipulated by editing and the judges anyway. The voters are lemmings. They vote for whoever the show tells them to vote for.
I don’t know whether they actually cheat the phone results, but I don’t think there’s any question that they use a heavy hand with the judging and editing to get the resuts they want.
If they did this show right, the audience would get to vote for who they want out instead of in.
IMHO, Lil, Danny, Adam, and Alexis are the best four left. If I were a producer, I would be pushing for those four to make it anyway I could. I don’t think they manipulate the votes or ignore the votes, but they do use all the tools at their disposal to make their desired outcome happen. This year, they have a new tool at their disposal, the save card. This should make it even easier to get the right people in the final four.
But all in all, I am more interested in the “Real Bikini Girl” story in Dio’s link. I never thought Katrina was really that hot and Casey is smokin’.
I’ve never seen an episode, so forgive me if this is a dumb question – buy why can’t they just report phone results any way they see fit? If they’re tallying them (or getting tallies from somewhere), why can’t they just rearrange the numbers as they want? Is there some Price-Waterhouse-like auditing firm putting their independent reputation on the line as to the poll’s veracity? Always been curious about this.
I don’t know that they can’t. I was just stating that as an anticipated objection to the show being fixed, not as something I’m actually convinced is true. I personally have no faith at all that the phone results aren’t faked.
Well, the voting is rigged by the voters; there is one group famous for having everyone “vote for the worst” and there are some people who actually do vote 10 times while others barely get through to vote once.
Thus it should come as no surprise that the results might not be all that kosher either - and why not? No laws being broken here. There is no money involved until the last singer is chosen, and the producers would be stupid to have their best singers voted off for whatever reasons and be left with the worst.
The show doesn’t really care about the best singers, though, it’s more about what gets the best ratings and what they think is the most marketable. If they really cared about the best singer, then Jennifer Hudson wouldn’t have finished 7th, behind the likes of John Stevens and George Huff (God, I suck for even remembering who those people are).
Even the Sanjaya saga served them well for ratings and publicity.
If those are the final four, then kudos to them because it would finally be a real compettion. I think the most likely win is one of the gals. It’s about time for another rocker chick.
Is that true? I know game shows are subject to rigorous FCC monitoring (and if I’m not mistaken, there may actually be laws on the books) to make sure they’re on the up-and-up. Wouldn’t the same hold true for a phone-in show like this?
Well, we’ll know soon enough, won’t we? There are 330 possible sets for the Final Four out of 11 contestants, so even granting that these four are the most talented, I’d think it fairly unlikely that that exact set gets chosen. If they don’t (say, three of them and some other contestant), then we know that the leak was incorrect. If they do, then we can at least strongly suspect that the leak was correct.
I liked George Huff, but you’re right that he probably shouldn’t have finished ahead of Jennifer Hudson. The new save card feature is designed, IMO, to save people like JHud from getting eliminated that early.
Also, in this years crop, on second thought, I think I would actually like Allison to make it into the final four over Alexis.
In the end, AI is purely a spectator sport for me, as I have never voted and never will. I have only one AI related song on my mp3 player(Chikezie’s “She’s a Woman”). For some people this would be a huge scandal, but for me, it’s just a sideshow.
I agree with all of your post, up until the last sentence. That would be the absolute dumbest way AI could possibly run the show. A whole lot of marketable talent would be voted off early.
AI wants to find out who will get the people to turn out & buy records, not who will inspire the most hatred. On top of that, you’d end up with the middle-of-the-road contestants after the fans of the 2 best singers finished voting the other off.
ETA: My guess is that the producers of the show will now make sure that the final four contestants are not the exact combination this staffer leaked.
Since we have nothing to prove or disprove either side of this argument, and we likely never will, anything we put out here is strictly guesswork.
My guesswork: Since rigging the show has no real benefit for the producers (they have them all under contract and they’ll still market whomever they like as much as they like, finishing position be damned), but it does have a very real downside (many viewers would drop the show in a heartbeat if there were evidence of a flat-out fix), it stands to reason things are on the up-and-up.
What these types of theories never explain is WHY the producers would care if one singer won instead of another. The entire premise is to get the public to like a singer enough to buy their records. What possible advantage is it to the producers to get Singer A voted for instead of Singer B. Wouldn’t that just make it more likely Singer A would fall flat on their face out in the real world? Unless they realize that the show is set up so that the singers who do well in their televised, talent show-like format aren’t most likely to sell records so they’re trying to subvert their own format in favor of more commercial singers. It all makes my head hurt.
FWIW, I can usually predict who will be voted off because they give the weakest performance.
Grace’s song just didn’t cut it. The talent this year means that the singers can’t afford a lot of mistakes. The smart ones will do what Adam did this week - ignore the themes as much as possible and keep marketing their own unique sound.
I hate conspiracy theories. Most of them are about as verifiable as religion. While I think there might have been something going on in the past (Clay v. Ruben), I seriously doubt the producers would jeopardize their cash cow fixing anybody past the top 4
Sometimes people just have to accept that with a completely non-democratic vote, good singers may get voted off and it doesn’t mean its a conspiracy. We have unlimited votes and phone lines get clogged. It may be that certain bad singers have a more vocal minority and vote 10-1 vs. a decent singer. It may just be that some people think great singers like Daughtrey would be safe, so they vote someone who’s on the brink, and that’s how good singers get voted off. I see no conspiracy there, just human nature
Similarily, Sanjaya’s ascendence sparked ratings but it could be simply because people who voted for him wanted to see him, and not because the producers rigged the show to keep him longer and generate interest
I go to VotefortheWorst.com and they’ve become a cesspool of hate lately. Its pretty sad
For those interested in this topic further, I suggest you go to the Television Without Pity site. In its American Idol section there is a thread called the “Grassy Knoll” wherein all kinds of theories on how the Power That Be manipulate the votingare discussed. quite amusing.http://http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/index.php?showtopic=2557715&st=18840
As I said, I haven’t seen the show since Ruben Studdard was on. I have no opinion at all on the subject.
I just wondered whether Alexis’ ouster would end the conspiracy talk, or just lead to MORE feverish speculation that “they” HAD to kick out one of the pre-selected final four, just to throw suspicious minds off!
Chart Throb is a 2006 novel by the author/comedian/director Ben Elton. It was released in hardback on 6 November 2006 in the UK, and 9 January 2007 in the US. It is a satire of X-Factor/Pop Idol style reality TV programmes.
Copied and pasted from Wikipedia (above).
It is a very good novel. It shows you how reality TV is a misnomer.