Warning: Non-movie news. Anyone sensitive to such topics are advised to shield their eyes and skip to another story.
Reach out and tamper with someone. Remember a few years ago when AT&T allowed the National Security Agency to set up a secret room inside an AT&T control center, so that all our e-mail, web surfing and phone traffic could be monitored and “analyzed”?
Always happy to lend a helping hand to the overlords in the form of illegal wiretapping, AT&T is now branching out to experiment with voter fraud. It’s only American Idol voter fraud. For now.
AT&T, one of the biggest corporate sponsors of “American Idol,” might have influenced the outcome of this year’s competition by providing phones for free text-messaging services and lessons in casting blocks of votes at parties organized by fans of Kris Allen, the Arkansas singer who was the winner of the show last week. (NYTimes)
I’m posting this as a follow-up because it was mentioned in the comments by Arkansas insiders that Kris Allen’s “victory” over Adam Lambert might be a result of homestate support as much as homophobic backlash. But it’s harder to measure that factor accurately when the people paying for American Idol advertising are enabling vote boosters for one contestant and not the other.
Representatives of AT&T helped fans of Mr. Allen at the two Arkansas events by providing instructions on how to send 10 or more text messages at the press of a single button, known as power texts. Power texts have an exponentially greater effect on voting than do single text messages or calls to the show’s toll-free phone lines. The efforts appear to run afoul of “American Idol” voting rules in two ways. 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. And the show regularly states that text voting is open only to AT&T subscribers and is subject to normal rates.
Not sure if this needs to be front page news on The New York Times and Huffington Post — but it is. And last week’s topic about Idol got more hits and more comments than any other item we posted on AD in the month of May. It’ll be movie-related news soon enough, when Adam Lambert becomes the next Elvis.
