"Idol" Voting Slammed

When it comes to American Idol fans, middle-aged housewives with limited patience are no match for so-called "power dialers" and cell-phone-equipped text messagers.

Such are the findings of a Broadcasting & Cable investigation into the Fox singing competition's "seriously flawed voting system."

The article, published Monday, looks into how jammed phone lines, text messaging and pesky power dialers are "thwarting democracy" on TV's most-watched show.

The piece comes less than a week after Idol's latest voting controversy, in which polished wedding-band belter La Toya London was bounced from the show with three weeks to go, having failed to secure enough votes to place her ahead of the shakier likes of Hawaiian teen Jasmine Trias.

Much was made of how Hawaii's support may have helped Trias stay in the competition, and helped London out of it. The island state, boasting just 1.2 million residents, placed 5 million Idol calls last Tuesday night.

But as Broadcasting & Cable points out, just because a call is placed to the toll-free Idol phone lines, doesn't mean a vote is cast. Fans are routinely met with busy signals, the result of overloaded local phone lines. In Hawaii, only 1.3 million of the 5 million calls got through to AT&T, which processes the votes.

None of this is new, but the magazine puts great emphasis on the plight of 40-year-old Pennsylvania homemaker Dee Law, who complains she has tuned out the show after failing to successfully complete a vote for Clay Aiken following last season's final sing off with Ruben Studdard.

Law told the magazine she called Aiken's phone line "five or six hundred times," but was met with a busy signal each time. Aiken ended up losing to Studdard.

If only Law had text messaged. Broadcasting & Cable says all votes cast via cell phone are recorded--it's a digital universe where there is no such thing as a busy signal. The mag says about 10 percent of the votes, or 2.5 million, recorded for last year's Ruben-and-Clay finale were the product of text messages.

The magazine also makes a case that power dialers or "phone phreakers" are wielding influence by commandeering lines via communications software and the Internet. This charge goes back to Idol's very first season, when producers conceded about 100 hackers were casting bloc votes. At the time, an exec called their effect on the overall results "statistically insignificant."

Broadcasting & Cable doesn't offer specific evidence that phone phreakers are more or less prevalent today, just a quote from Tribune TV's "CyberGuy" reporter Kurt Knutsson proclaiming there are "thousands upon thousands of moderately tech-savvy fans who really get emotionally compelled to do something about who they want to win."

The magazine cites unnamed "critics" as suggesting phone phreakers are trying to influence the results so as to insure big paydays from Idol betting lines.

Fox declined to supply a comment for the article. A call seeking reaction to the piece was not returned Monday.

While the article's headline ("American Idol Outrage") suggests scandal, the Federal Communications Commission has received a grand total of 69 emailed complaints about the show on a variety of subjects over the last three seasons.

La Toya London and Jennifer Hudson controversies or no, only about 10 to 20 of those complaints were generated from this season, FCC spokesman Dan Rumelt said Monday. And at least a few of those gripes had nothing to do with the voting process, but rather Simon Cowell's wayward middle finger, a mini-controversy that erupted following a telecast in March.

As Broadcast & Cable notes, the FCC has received an additional 1,000 or so complaints which were not sent to the watchdog agency directly. Rumelt said it was not known how many of the people airing those grievances were even aware their messages were being cc'd to the FCC.

It sounds unlikely, at least, that La Toya London lodged one of the complaints.

In a telephone press conference with reporters Friday, the poised London conceded that something as old-fashioned as personality, or lack of apparent one, may have been the reason she was sent packing.

"It probably does have an effect on voting," London said. "People want to get to know you, and I don't think I really got a chance for America to get to know me."