Corporate Sponsor AT&T May Have Swayed ‘American Idol’ Results Toward Kris Allen
Posted on May 27th, 2009 by Hot Momma
Fans of Adam Lambert and fair play are crying foul on the American Idol final results saying Kris Allen may have gained an unfair boost from the shows biggest corporate sponsor AT&T, who gave a sector of his fans some phones for free text-messaging services.
Before going into details of this ‘potential scandal’ that the network is planning to ignore, it strikes me that text voting being open only to AT&T subscribers may not favor any particular contestant but it’s still exclusionary. Maybe only viewers that drink Pepsi should be allowed vote too?
Anyway representatives of AT&T, provided the free text-messaging services at two parties organized by fans of Kris Allen in Arkansas (his hometown), after the final performance episode of “American Idol” last week, according to the company and people at the events. To greatly compound the apparent favoritism, the AT&T reps gave instructions on how to send 10 or more text messages at the press of a single button, known as power texts to all the Allen fans at the party. Too bad that power texting appears to be in violation of “American Idol” voting rules. The show broadcasts an on-screen statement at the end of each episode warning that blocks of votes cast using “technical enhancements” that unfairly influence the outcome of voting can be thrown out. I guess the key term is ‘can be’. There appear to have been no similar efforts to provide free texting services to supporters of Adam Lambert, who finished as the runner-up to Allen, which is beside the point really. Officials of Fox Broadcasting are now busy burying their heads in the sand hoping this will all go away.
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