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Why Idol should have turned a negative into a positive

After its website bungle, Australian Idol missed an opportunity to have a three-way battle on Sunday.

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Australian Idol‘s website bungle, in which it displayed the wrong elimination numbers for its contestants, has surely left a sour taste for fans of the show during its crucial last week.

The official line, according to TEN and FremantleMedia, is that they are confident it didn’t affect the final outcome. This is based on the number of hits the site received during its erroneous 25 minutes.

The problem is, viewers aren’t so confident. And that’s where it matters.

We are never told how many votes any eliminated reality contestant ever gets (Big Brother at least used to show us percentages). Therefore the trust between viewer and producers really only stretches so far.

There is also no real way of knowing if one hit would have translated to one vote. Who’s to say somebody didn’t log onto the site, and send 100 votes in somebody’s direction? Producers know the likelihood of this is negligible, but there’s no way of knowing for sure.

Which is why the show should have turned a negative into a positive.

Sunday’s finale should have included all three singers, Wes, Luke and Mark, in a three way “first ever” battle.

God knows the show is long enough to do it (it usually runs overtime as it is).

Dancing with the Stars had a three way tussle for its 2008 title just over a week ago. The elimination of the first contestant provided it with a cliffhanger halfway through the show. Idol should have done the same thing.

As it is there were three “winner’s songs” in readiness anyway.

In the decision-making window that was Monday, producers clearly missed that opportunity and instead the show has angered fans of Mark Spano, who was eliminated. Wouldn’t it have been much better to bring those fans to the Sunday finale in a dramatic three-way battle?

No doubt not eliminating a singer could have meant potentially reimbursing viewers for calls already logged. But with Dancing’s “carry-over” of votes after it failed to eliminate a contestant a precedent had been set (albeit, not a perfect one).

The issue here is essentially this: all reality-voting shows need to provide facts, not excuses. If viewers are asked to spend money, it is reasonable to expect some hard and fast figures showing where the votes went.

That way there can be no unanswered questions when such errors occur, viewers can have their faith restored and reality shows can remain transparent.

Please lift your game for 2009.

26 Responses

  1. Leo, 10 has already done The X Factor. Daniel McPherson hosted it and the three mentors/judges were Kate Ceberano, Mark Holden and John Reid. This aired in 2005.

    Unless you mean for 10 to just air the UK versions and not make a localised one.

  2. Like your thoughts here David.
    Networks could turn this into a positive.

    Only one small problem. Commonsense !!

    Networks do not know meaning of word or have own interpretation

  3. Who cares?? The winner (besides Guy Sebastian) rarely achieves success. 2nd or 3rd place is the way to go.

    More than likely 10 is behind the ‘outrage’, trying to get more people to watch and vote on the final.

  4. Rigged. They picked Shannon Noll Jr. and the guy who looks like he came out of a Sunsilk commercial. Maybe they’re getting tired of losers winning the thing and then dropping off the face of the Earth? (anyone heard from Natalie Gauci lately?)

  5. How many people vote by calling anyway? Aren’t a huge majority of the votes sent via SMS these days? They’d have detailed records of how many votes were sent via phone and SMS and their accounting firm probably said that there was next to no chance of the outcome being affected based on the voting trends. It’s a storm in a teacup.

  7. Craig, the “phone-in scandal” you refer to was as a result of scam “quiz” shows of the Mint variety. There is a very good reason why they’re no longer on air in Australia.

    Potentially “rigged” voting on shows like Idol is a different thing altogether. They’re not trying to entice you to vote by promising you anything in return (well, other than “marketing information” 🙂 while the scam quiz shows not only lured you to call with cash prizes, but also rigged the phone-in process to make it almost impossible to get through to answer the call (while every failed call was still charged at the premium rate) and designed “quiz” questions that were impossible for anyone to successfully answer.

    The scam shows’ behaviour was arguably criminal. Idol’s behaviour is just, well, showbiz smoke and mirrors. I would never vote on the show anyway unless it was free as it is in the US.

  8. When is 10 going to “rest” Idol for a bit – why not go with UK X Factor!
    The UK X Factor has our own Dannii Minogue as judge, along with Simon Cowell, its a thousand times better than Idol, the contestants are given so much support, in the name of backing singers, dancers, sets, props – making each performance the best it can be, instead of just singing with a live band.

  9. I couldn’t have handled the pressure of a three way final – no way. I read that they got KPMG to audit the voting issue and were assured by them that the 25 min timeframe could not have affected the result.

    Keeping in mind the SMS no was still correct – 19 10 10 then type in name of artist. The correct numbers were advertised on tv. So, it would only have affected those people who logged on within the 25 minutes and decided to phone thru via the 1902 55 55 XX method. When you ring these numbers you get a recorded message “Hi this is XXX – thanks for voting for me” – so at worst you would only make the mistake once. Some would have countereacted that by voting twice for the correct person (granted that’s not fair to the caller but the result would have been the same).

    Major point – if they had decided to go to a 3 way final – they would have had to null and void ALL votes made since Sunday night. This would have had to involve a re-credit to everyone who voted.

    I think the result must have been so clear cut that they really knew it didn’t matter!

  11. its only a matter of time before a “phone in scandal” emerges here like the one that UK had last year, broadcasters there were forced to pay back millions of dollars in votes and were issed in even more in fines from the broadcast regulators!

  13. Rick,

    The same with Sonia Kruger and her comments (and Sam Newman’s shenanigans), as with this. There has to be self-censorship and self-regulation.
    At the moment our Television Networks are looking like corporate cowboys.

  14. I completely agree! It should have been a “three way finale”.. After all, it makes it creates a least a little more suspense, especially since its obvious that Wes will win it this year!

  15. Whatever…get on with it…Wes is clearly the best so it doesn’t really matter. Faith in a Network? Since when has any viewer had that. This doesn’t change anything. People who care about the program will vote, regardless of errors like this.

  16. Totally agree that we need more transparency, but how can we insist on it?

    I’d have hoped that the industry could be self-regulating, but that’s not happening at all. Do we write to our MPs? I can’t help but think they should be focused on other things.

  17. This is worse than The Mint! 10 really dropped the ball on this one and if I were Mark Spano i would seriously look into Legal action, how convenient, the guy who’s number was mucked up got eliminated!

  20. Well, actually, TEN had ‘three in the final’ for Big Brother this year, so it is not really a matter of TEN being smart enough to follow Seven’s lead. Further, I seem to recall BB being criticised for having three in the final as it gives further opportunity for producers to ensure that their own selection wins the comp.

    Whether there is two, three or twenty-seven in next Sunday’s final one thing can be sure… it will be a drawn-out event full of many sentimental mini-biopics of the contestants.

  23. Doesnt Earnest & Young check the votings or something?

    I like the 3 people in the finale, idea. Seven were smart enough to do that, why cant Ten?

    Mark should be in the finale.

  24. Is there any independent body who checks the results? Or has it always only been whatever they say onscreen is the result, and that’s that? What’s to stop it from being completely rigged from the get-go?

    I say this in the hope that a scandal will finally get this rubbish off my TV.

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