The American Idol Farce

The Inner Workings Of Glenn's Brain ^ | 05/21/2003 | Self

[Glenn]

It's a farce.

The winner tonight will be a random choice influenced by the efficiency of ATT phone lines.

The phone number for each finalist has a finite capacity to handle connected calls (else one would not get a busy signal). One must assume that the capacity for each number is near equal.

Given that, if the capacity were, say, 1,000 calls per minute and 2,000 people per minute attempted to dial for Clay and 2,500 for Ruben, the results for each of them would be 1,000 votes.

Given that the difference between Clay and Ruben is a mere .28%, then we're talking about the luck of the ATT draw here. Someone needs to alert the media to the fact that the limitations of technology has these two fellows finishing nearly exactly equally and is completely unrepresentative of whatever the popular vote might have been.

[Glenn]

Flame away. I've got confidence in it.

[Glenn]

Each to their own, right? If you're sick of it, don't read the posts.

[smith288]

The purest form of Democracy being cancelled out by AT&T... What a world....what a world!!!

[small voice in the wilderness]

Thank you. I thought I was the only one! DGIH, when will these farce fests end?

[LouD]

I agree. Moreover, it is in Fox's best interest to have a cliffhanger result; Now they have two stars to promote.

However, that said, both finalists, as well as many of the others eliminated during the series (but especially the final three) are enormously talented, and I would have difficuty selecting among Ruben, Clay, and Kimberly, as their styes are so different that direct comparisons are impossible.

[Trust but Verify]

LOL, but I notice this is a much shorter thread than the 'pro-American Idol' one!

Personally, I do not watch these stupid programs, but that doesn't make me immune from them. I have a 19 year-old daughter who loves it and two emotional basket-case co-workers who talk about the previous nights' show endlessly the next morning.

[annyokie]

I wasn't aware of any other postings than this one. I am just tired of it on FoxNews.

[discostu]

WAAA WAAA WAAA.

They're both going to get big record contracts and be filthy rich. Just look at last year, they're both doing fine, in the movie together, making tunes, printing money. Picking the "winner" is nothing more than deciding who gets a HUGE contract right now and who gets an ALMOST AS HUGE contract tomorrow. Right after this is done the 10 finalists will go on the road together and make a bunch of dough. There's nothing for the media to report, except that this thing was so huge it rivaled Mother's Day for trunk busy signals.

[longtermmemmory]

reminds me of an old movie called "the president's analyst".

I believe James Coburn stared.

[Drew68]

You could pass the bar and represent the loser in a suit against AI and walk away wealthy regardless of the outcome!

Just giving you a hard time.

I'm currently watching this abomination right now. I've tried hard to avoid it but. . . I. . . Just. . . Can't. . . Turn. . . It. . . Off!

[discostu]

Actually BMG will have two stars to promote. Once the TV show is done Fox moves on. BMG (whom Simon works for) gives the winner a contract and has first dibs on the other finalists.

[discostu]

That's a great movie, not sure why this reminds you of it, but it's a great movie.

[annyokie]

*sigh* I fear not soon enough. Who are the idiots who watch Fear Factor? Oh, wait, my co-workers!

Man, give me the Discovery Channel any day.

[longtermmemmory]

because Ma Bell controlls all...

[discostu]

{Bell goes off in brain} Yeah, now I remember.

[floriduh voter]

Being from Florida, I always question the voting method as the toll free number for Clay was constantly busy. I find it hard to believe he lost by 130K votes. No wait, at first they said 13K votes. No wait, then they changed it to 1,333. Fox changed the total three times.

I won't be watching it next year as I do think it was fixed. There's no way to tell and now Fox is going to show the phone bank where all the magic happened. Clay was much better than Ruben. Ruben won Florida because our phone connections sucked.

[Mike Darancette]

Flame away. I've got confidence in it.

What you said is true on the basic level but to make it worse any glitch in any of the lines handling calls could lower the rate of calls from 1,000/minute to 999 calls/minute for that contestant for some amount of time.

If I remember correctly the number receiving the most traffic would be most likely to have congestion related technical difficulties.

The results were no better that a coin flip.

The Clue that there was a problem is last week when three constants were voted on. The Host said that <2% separated each contestant with about half the volume of calls per contestant than the final.