It seems like every year on American Idol, the losing finalists fans try to find a way to start up some sort of controversy about why their favorite lost. This year apparently is no different.
The New York Times is reporting that AT&T may have “swayed” the voting during the finals of American Idol by hosting two hometown parties for fans of winner Kris Allen, during which they were showed how to send ten times the allowed number of text votes at a time. Since there appears to be no similar efforts to provide free texting services to supporters of Adam Lambert, his fans are calling foul on the whole situation and claiming irregularities in the competition’s voting.
Per NY Times:
“In Arkansas, we were invited to attend the local watch parties organized by the community. A few local employees brought a small number of demo phones with them and provided texting tutorials to those who were interested.” – Official statement from AT&T.
Per USA Today:
“FOX and the producers of American Idol are absolutely certain that the results of this competition are fair, accurate and verified. Kris Allen is, without a doubt, the American Idol. We have an independent third-party monitoring procedure in place to ensure the integrity of the voting process. In no way did any individuals unfairly influence the outcome of the competition.” – Official statement from FremantleMedia North America, 19 Entertainment and FOX Broadcasting Company
Also according to the NY Times, 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. With almost 100 million votes cast in total, it seems doubtful to me that what AT&T did with a few little parties and a couple dozen phones could have had that much of an effect on the result. Glam-bert fans need to just sit down and knock off the whining and crying. This still probably didn’t have any impact on a vote that was reportedly not even close anyway. Your boy lost, suck it up and move on.
Being runner up might not be such a bad thing for Lambert anyways. He is reportedly considering a stint as the new frontman for Queen but he also wants to work on his own album. His dream scenario would be to do both!
Per AP News:
“How do you say no to being in Queen?” said Lambert. “I mean, that’s unbelievable. But at the same time, I do have my own thing to do right now, and that’s my goal. So if I could, I would try to do both. That’s the honest question. I would try to do both. I would love to perform with them anytime they wanted me to but I also have my record to do. So, we’ll see… My record will be kind of a rock-pop-electronic-dance thing. I don’t know how to describe it. I think it’s gonna take on a life of its own, as far as genre goes. There’s a way to take the glam rock of the ’70s and the classic rock of the ’70s and kind of modernize it. … I want it to be produced in a very very current, almost futuristic, way.”
Among the people he’d like to work with include Madonna, Lady GaGa, and Katy Perry. Something tells me 27-year-old California native Adam Lambert is here to stay for quite some time.
Image Via: MTV, AT&T
