Matthew King 12 May 06

“He has a distinctive voice and distinctive appeal. The problem is that he never broadened his base very much.”

And he was, as Simon pointed out, self-indulgent in his song choices.

Matthew King 12 May 06

“He has a distinctive voice and distinctive appeal. The problem is that he never broadened his base very much.”

And he was, as Simon pointed out, self-indulgent in his song choices.

Chris S 12 May 06

Yeah but their demographics are most likely very different: children, teenagers, and young adults vote for American Idol, whereas slightly more mature adults vote in elections (and, I presume, don’t piss their money away at 2.99/call, or whatever it is).

Though I’m sure there’s some overlap there.

Jeff Koke 12 May 06

His prediction that Elliot will win relies on an assumption that I don’t necessarily believe, namely that Elliot and Taylor have about equal fan-bases right now.

With Chris gone, most of his voters are going to swing over to Taylor’s camp, since they are the most similar. If Katharine goes home next week, most of those voters will go to Eliot’s side. Chris and Katharine do have very similarly sized fan-bases, so the net result will cancel each other out. So the winner between Eliot and Taylor will be the one who has the biggest fan-base right now — which I believe is Taylor (he’s never been in the bottom 3 or 2).

So unless Katharine pulls out a stunning performance next week, she’ll be gone and Taylor will be the next American Idol. Which is fine with me. He deserves it.

TonyO 12 May 06

Alternatively, people may have been voting strategically. People probably have a list of candidates they want to see do well. They might have assumed that the crowd would support Chris. People may have had Chris as their top choice but assumed Elliot (just as an example) needed their vote so that someone else would go. If enough people used that logic it could explain the result.

If I’m right a lot of people will be kicking themselves that they didn’t just vote for their favorite.

Augie De Blieck Jr. 12 May 06

While picking up the voters from the contestant who just left is a sound strategy, there’s one other factor that the article misses:

You don’t want to have a middling week. Have a GREAT week. That’ll inspire people to vote for you. Have an AWFUL week. That will inspire your fans to vote to sae you. But if you have a middling week nobody’s going to have that fire to vote for you.

Note that Taylor and Elliott had great weeks. Elliott’s doubly-so, since he went in as the underdog and America LOVES an underdog. Katharine had a generally bad week. Chris? He was Chris. Nothing stellar. Nothing off-key. Nothing memorable.

You need to be memorably — one way or the other — to stand out from the crowd and light the fans’ fire.

pwb 12 May 06

It could be simpler than that:

To be a solo artist as a “rock guy”, you have to write you’re own stuff. And even if/tho he does, that just doesn’t come through on American Idol. the guy will make a fine lead singer for Fuel or whoever, but I don’t see a solo career for him anytime soon.

idlerock 12 May 06

�He has a distinctive voice and distinctive appeal. The problem is that he never broadened his base very much.�

Simon hit the nail on the head with that one.

———
Fav Am Idol Spoof: www.whowillcare.net

idlerock 12 May 06

�He has a distinctive voice and distinctive appeal. The problem is that he never broadened his base very much.�

Simon hit the nail on the head with that one.

———
Fav Am Idol Spoof: www.whowillcare.net

reid 13 May 06

Look@me—commenting before coffee. What has the world come to? Although the missus and I dislike Elliott very much (we just don’t get it), it’s not a big surprise to see Mr. Chris leave. It’s American Idol, which implies you have a little something for everyone, from the gilrlies to the grannies. Mr. Chris wants to be a rock star and being a rock star requires you to alienate a big part of your potential audience in the name of being interesting to the rest.

@chris - aren’t the non-text message calls free? They’re 866 numbers.

@tony - “people vote strategically”. Really? Really?? I think you’re giving people an aweful lot of credit.

Mary 13 May 06

reid, if you follow sites like Television Without Pity, you’ll see that the Net savvy voters, at least, seem to vote strategically. For example, highly polarizing contestants can’t be voted against directly, but as the field gets smaller, startegic voting can have an effect. If you favour person X and want person Y, the biggest competition, to be weakened, you may feel that person X should get enough votes from the crowd, so you’ll throw some votes at person Z in the hope of weakening person Y.

The new site DialIdol, which measures busy signal rates for each contestant, also makes strategic voting more likely. With a couple of exceptions, they’ve done very well at predicting results, even Chris’ “surprise” ouster this week.

The big competition in Season 2, Ruben versus Clay, may or may not support the hypothesis that you win by broadening your audience and picking up the voting blocs of other contestsants. The show producers have said that Clay got the most votes every week from Wild Card to the final 3. Ruben eked out a small margin of victory in the final 2. His win could have been because Clay was a more polarizing contestant and amiable Ruben picked up more of Kim Locke’s votes when she was eliminated. Or the result could have been due to overloaded phone lines making the number of completed votes (rather than attempted votes) a near tie that could have gone either way. Post AI record sales suggest (but don’t prove) that Clay had a larger fan base.

Yes, I spend too much time thinking about such things.

Travo 14 May 06

Yeah, but based on that logic can you pick the next American President?

Mary 14 May 06

That’s easy: the one who can hold the longest glory note and/or use the most melisma.

reid 15 May 06

Mary, the question isn’t “do some people vote strategically” but does a statistically significant percentage vote strategically? There’s no doubt that some do but, if we assume a 1:1 caller/viewer ratio, do 40 million? Do 10 million? Do 2 million? Whatever the number is, I bet it’s too small to make much of a difference. I’m open to evidence suggesting otherwise. However, there’s a trend in recent politics, news, etc., to use insignificant anecdotal evidence as “proof” of a larger trend, which is probably where this is headed.

Geoff 15 May 06

An alternate strategy for electing presidents is to vote on your first, second, and third favorite candidates. A #1 vote counts 3 pts, a #2 vote counts 2pts, and a #3 vote counts 1 pt. Try this with a group of (presumably representative) friends. This doesn’t require the multiple rounds of voting (a la American Idol) and it produces a similar effect — to win, a candidate must have broader appeal.

A good book on America’s voting practices (and other related subjects) is “The Future of Freedom” by Fareed Zakaria (editor of Newsweek Interntl):

http://fareedzakaria.com/books/index.html

I don’t have high hopes that fundamental change in U.S. voting practices will happen anytime soon, but this is how we’ll do it when I start my own country.

Darrel 15 May 06

Sadly, Pop Music, like today’s politics, are pretty much the same…all fluff, no substance, and panders to the blandest of bland issues.

J 15 May 06

Darrel, pop music has never been about substance, nor will it ever be about substance. It’s just about entertainment, happiness, and a good time. There’s nothing wrong with that. Quit looking to pick a fight.

SUE K 15 May 06

NO substance? Have you ever heard of Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Otis Redding………..the list could go on and on to even include many of todays rap & hip hop artists.

Kathreine 17 May 06

Anybody with an autodialer or a family that owns an autodialer server can bang out 10,000 or more calls per hour. If your career is so precious and the contract so big at the end of idol. Shouldn’t someone use this technology to make it to the BIG TIME. There is NO WAY of verifying where the call originated within the IDOL Counting syste, didn’t the last Presidential election teach anybody anything. The most important thing is who is counting the votes. Did Kelly make it due to an AutoDialer? If your going to be in American Idol Next time be sure to look into an autodialer. FYI alls fair in Business, and this is a Business.

Anonymous Coward 17 May 06

Chris lost my vote and many others when he started talking about his underwear. He thought he was a shoe in and it was disgusting.

Alex 17 May 06

Chris lost my vote and many others when he started talking about his underwear. He thought he was a shoe in and it was disgusting.

John 18 May 06

Every call to a toll free number (Idol #s) is identified by the locations (city) and phone number regardless if somebody has caller ID or not. The owner of the 800/866 number is paying for the call and has the right to know who is calling the number.

With this said, it is insane American Idol doesn’t limit the number of calls counted from the same phone number unless they want to control the voting.

Also, if you look at the polls done, most callers are from the South with the least being from the west and North East. More than 70% of the 30 million or so viewers have never voted. Even a much larger portion vote each week making you realize that the 50 Million or so calls recieved are probably from about 5 Million Viewers with the largest percentage only voting once.

Another words, speed dialers have a huge effect on the results.

Taylor Hicks is from the south and majored in Business and Marketing in college. He had an album out in 1997 that he produced and marketed on his own web site that has been taken down during Idol. Taylor Hicks has the least Vocal range of any of the top ten and only made it through the first round with 2 of the 3 judges votes. Soul albums do not sell well compared to other genres because there is much less of an audiance. Taylor Hicks looks like he is 40 years old. He has NO vocal range and has chosen only simple mono range songs to perform and when forced to sing anything else became a goober to entertain. Listen to any original of any song he has performed and compare it to his version and he really becomes a joke. Sure he entertains but just as much as any mediocore performer at a bar.

When he wins, Americon Idol will be forced to change the way they record votes as there is no way in the world he will ever have a number one song unless it is something like a “Don’t Worry Be Happy” song that can be done by anyone.

Amy 19 May 06

Being a Pop star has never required vocal range or serious singing talent.

richard 24 May 06

taylor is going to win now that chris is gone.

richard 24 May 06

taylor is going to win now that chris is gone.

KOOL KAT 24 May 06

TAYLOR HICKS IS GOING TO WIN!!

katty 24 May 06

I fell so badly that Elliot did get kicked off, and some of other really good contestents, I don’t think that the two final contestants were the best. I feel that the voting played a HUGE part in the not so talented kids getting into the top two. I tied to vote so many times and could not get through at all ! So my votes were never counted. The phone lines were busy for an entire 3 hours… how many other were not able to vote for their favoites? We should all only be allowed to call in or text message in 2 times. then it would be fair and the real winner, and good singer would emerge..

kelly 11 Jul 06

chris should have won! its bwtterfor him that he didn;t because then he would be tied to American Idol for a year!