American Idol year after year continues to attract millions of viewers and many of those who watch will also vote for their favorite performer. One way of entering your ballot is by texting. This year only those subscribers of AT&T were able to vote via text.
AT&T has come under fire for possibly altering the results for the final vote that determined the winner of this year's competition. In Arkansas where the winning contestant lives AT&T provided a free texting service at two parties and provided no such service in the hometown of the contestant who lost the competition.
"Representatives of AT&T helped fans of Mr. Allen at the two Arkansas events by providing instructions on how to send 10 or more text messages at the press of a single button, known as power texts". These power texts can add up quite quickly when one person is able to vote at a 10-1 ratio of those being forced to call in because they do not subscribe to AT&T.
Did AT&T really alter the outcome? We wont ever know if their contribution of power texting had an impact or not but it does leave some doubt to the final results. The producers of American Idol do state that "blocks of votes cast using 'technical enhancements' that unfairly influence the outcome of voting can be thrown out." How closely the block voting is monitored is unknown but expect changes to next years competition after the outcry of AT&T's possible slanted participation this year.
39 Comments - Add comment