Yuck – I hope this isn’t true. Apparently, before the finale, Antonella Barba, Haley Scarnato and Gina Glocksen put messages up on their MySpace pages urging their friends to vote for Jordin Sparks. That is rough! I’m not sure why they would feel it’s appropriate to do to Blake Lewis with whom they must tour this summer. If they were from a different season, maybe, but I don’t think fellow cast-members should do this kind of thing. It just isn’t classy, in my books. Well, Antonella and Haley had already shown us that but I was surprised at Gina.

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Post from: Idol Stalker

In an interview prior to the start of the fifth season of American Idol, Executive Producer Nigel Lythgoe revealed for the first time that Clay Aiken had led the fan voting every week from the Wild Card week onward until the finale, when the possibly-random voting result gave Ruben Studdard the win. Of course, the truth will probably never be known and Clay went on to have a great career but that is besides the point.

During season four, several major voting errors were reported and confirmed. The first resulted in the first-ever re-vote in American Idol history. Mikalah Gordon was eliminated during “Billboard #1 Hits” week when the show mixed up the voting numbers for three of the Top 11 contestants, Anwar Robinson, Jessica Sierra and Gordon herself (FYI – I think Mikalah needed to go anyway). As if that wasn’t bad enough THE MISTAKE HAPPENED AGAIN!!!! After Anthony Fedorov’s second performance, the phone numbers displayed in the closed captioning were incorrect. As visible in the image above, the first two numbers that appeared were 1-866-IDOLS-01 and 1-866-436-5701, and the last number was Text Vote 5704. The “01″ number is actually for Carrie Underwood! Two more contestants were victims that night…

As was the case with Anthony’s number, Bo Bice and Vonzell Solomon’s phone numbers were incorrectly listed as 1-866-IDOLS-01 and 1-866-436-5701, which, again, was the number for Carrie Underwood!!! Carrie is a great artist and this is nothing against her – I’m just relaying facts.

One contestant, Frenchie Davis, was disqualified and removed from the competition after topless photos of her surfaced on the Internet. She later appeared in the Broadway musical Rent. Antonella Barba did not suffer the same fate.

According to the Howard 100 News, LaKisha Jones’ departure was not because of America’s vote, but rather a predetermined outcome. Their source claims that travel arrangements for LaKisha to return home were made prior to the start of the May 8, 2007 performance show, well before the phone lines were opened. The source also claims that a significant sized crew was sent to Flint, Michigan for reaction shots, however crews were not sent to the remaining contestants’ home towns.

Since the 2004 season, American Idol producers have battled online community services such as the weblogs DialIdol.com, Worldsentiment.com, and VotefortheWorst.com. DialIdol predicts the winner of each week’s contest based on how often an automatic dialer encounters a busy signal for each contestant; Worldsentiment uses very large samplings and algorithms to predict the outcome of the vote-off; and VotefortheWorst exhorts viewers to vote for what the site deems to be the worst contestant, rather than the best. Some in the media have implied that Las Vegas odds makers exert behind-the-scenes influence in protecting the services.

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Post from: Idol Stalker

When Jennifer Hudson was voted off, there was such a public uproar that the question of racism was immediately raised. Even Elton John got involved in the debate, despite the fact that, of the six remaining contestants, at the time, three were black (Fantasia Barrino, La Toya London and George Huff). Ruben Studdard, also African-American, had won the season before. Unfortunately, as is the case with most racial discussions, the two groups involved are usually Caucasians and African-Americans.

Do Other Groups Get Forgotten?

In the uproars and conspiracy theories that have been bestowed upon Idol in these past 6 seasons, one question remains – why have there been no Asian contestants in the top 12? While I definitely had not tapped him to win, I thought Paul Kim was good enough for the top 12. He certainly sang better than Alaina Alexander, Antonella Barba, Leslie Hunt, Nick Pedro and AJ Tabaldo. I guess America didn’t see it that way. Maybe that’s why Sanjaya sticks around. Aside from the fact that he is South Asian, his presence brings diversity to the predictable.

Since writing this post originally, one reader pointed out Jasmine Trias, who I remember being very proud of being Hawaiian (which can consist of any number of cultural backgrounds since Hawaii is known for it’s diverse population) but to the less discerning and vigilant viewer may not have recognized her as being Asian.  If there’s someone else, let me know!

Here are some sites I found this morning after searching the net for others who raised the same question (most were Asian themselves):

• Asian Guy’s American Idol (I’m not even kidding about the name!)
• Yahoo Discussion (wow, was that interesting reading…)
• 8 Asians
• Where Are All the Asians on American Idol (discussion thread)

If anyone finds anything interesting of the subject, send it over!

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Post from: Idol Stalker

Jory Steinberg starts off the individual performances again. No judge feedback. We just keep going. Not too bad.

Wow nobody really made much of an impression. Simon Cowell just sent the entire first set of 6 girls home. Let’s just put the pressure on the girls right out of the gate. Can you imagine being in the next set of girls going up to perform? Would it make that big of a difference on you or not? Are they just being hardcore out of the gate because there are so many girls?

— Commercial Break —

The first girl up Perla reminds me Mikaylah Gordon, mostly attitude with a little bit of talent to boot. Simon agrees, she’s personality over talent right now and that’s not good. The Army reservist, Rachel, didn’t make it and I think she could actually sing pretty well.

Baylie Brown, the next Carrie or Kellie is up now. She does have talent and she’s got charisma as well. Her voice is reminding me of the lead singer of Dixie Chicks, hopefully she’s not as political. Baylie moves forward again.

Remember the girl that lied to her dad about making the audition? She gets sent home too, but she said she’s already a winner because she made her parents proud.

One girl, Nicole, argues with her mom about the song she wants to sing. She finally caves in on stage and sings the song her mom wanted her to and she didn’t make it through. Her mom then came on stage and let the judges know the reason her daughter sang the song. It didn’t go very far with Simon because he said it wasn’t the song that made the difference. I understand what Nicole was saying though that not “feeling” the song impacts how your sing and perform the song as well.

More girls make it and more girls head home. Up next after the commercial break will be the guys.

— Commercial Break —

Brian Miller starts it off for the guys. At only 19 years of age, he’s got lots of talent. The only problem I have is that he’s singing the same song he did in the original auditions.

Jarrod Fowler, Navy Officer, does a good job as well and puts it out there by singing “You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban. Maybe he shouldn’t have, he didn’t make it through.

Matt Sato makes it three in a row. The guys are nailing things down much more effectively than the women did on the first day in Hollywood. Matt makes it through again.

Lots more guys make it through that I wanted to see continue, although they didn’t show their performances. Guys with good personalities and charisma. It will be interesting to see how everyone does during group night, which is what we’ve got coming after the commercial break.

— Commercial Break —
(Okay, I’ve got to say I just saw a commercial that had more business being on TV during the Superbowl than any other commercial I saw a few weeks ago. It was a commercial from Domino’s Pizza where guys are arguing over the smell and taste of the pizza. The guy arguing for smell has a HUGE nose and the guy arguing for taste has a LARGE mouth. Then a guy appears and says “look at the cheese” and he’s got eyes like the one contestant from American Idol that Simon said looked like a monkey. Then there’s a guy outside mowing the yard that says “that sounds good” and has large ears of course.)

Odd for this show is that they let the people pick their own groups. And it turns out just like picking teams at recess, some people getting left out. People are wishing they picked differently now.

Some groups still practicing of course, any group that’s aren’t still practicing are stupid.

I still can’t believe these people struggle with the lyrics. Send somebody to the phone and have them call a friend to look up the lyrics online and fax them to the front desk.

Group dynamics are so much fun. One of the reasons I’m a big fan of Survivor. Can’t wait to see how these things we’ve been teased about show up on stage in front of the judges.

— Commercial Break —

HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU NOT MEMORIZE THE WORDS! How can you make it that far and not memorize the words.

The group of four guys with the beatboxer need to quit now and just go off on their own group now and start selling records.

Mr. Chest Hair recovered himself fairly well. Jason makes it through but his partners don’t and he’s the one that forgot their lyrics.

Baylie forgets her words. That’s too bad, she’s not going to recover from the judges on this one regardless of the commercial appeal Simon said she had in her first audition. Her two partners were the two friends Antonella and Amanda. The friend, Antonella, that didn’t think she was as good as her friend, Amanda, is the one that’s going to make it. I called it, Baylie goes home. The blonde stuck up rich girl, Amanda, made some comment about her making it through because God likes good people, needs to lose and lose HARD! Her attitude is horrible and I don’t care if she can sing like Mariah Carey she needs to go home. Her friend on the other hand has talent and personality and would probably be twice the person she is if she stopped hanging out with the other girl.

In the clips of other people that don’t make it through, the long haired and bearded guy didn’t make it through either. It would have been interesting to see how he would have done if he went further through.

— Commercial Break —

The judges are playing shuffle with the Polaroids of the contestants and divide them into three rooms. We’ll see which room makes it. I’m very happy. The little snotty girl, Amanda, was in the room that got cut. The only sad part for me is that she didn’t have the chance to get singled out on stage and made to look like an idiot. Best of luck to Antonella though, I truly do wish her the best.

It’s down to 12 guys and 12 girls. Let the real fun begin!

Post from: Idol Stalker