Technology Again Causes American Idol Controversy, Fingers Pointed At AT&T

from the newsworthy dept

Apparently the outcome of the latest season of American Idol caused some controversy when the contestant generally regarded as the underdog of the two finalists was crowned the winner, provoking an angry backlash from his rival's fans. Now, they're pointing the finger at AT&T, alleging it helped skew the vote. This isn't the first time telecommunications have caught this sort of flak, as it's been a regular occurrence during the show's run that people have faced jammed phone lines when they've tried to vote. But this time, it's a little different. Apparently AT&T reps were at a couple of viewing parties organized by fans of the winning contestant, Kris Allen, and brought along a bunch of phones with them -- since, of course, only people on AT&T's wireless network can vote for the show's winner via text message. Then, the reps supposedly showed people at the parties how to "power text", or send in several votes at once. It seems unlikely that the votes spawned from the two parties were enough to tip the balance in Allen's favor, but the appearance of impropriety on the part of one of the show's major sponsors may be a bit more damaging.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Don't Tell American Idol You Can't Make Money From Free Content

from the see-free,-disengage-brain dept

As Mike recently pointed out, he gets a little annoyed when people say "free is not a business model." As he points out, free is really just part of the business model, and the challenge is in using free as part of the business model, and he's compiled example after example after example of people doing exactly this. Now add American Idol to this list. Building on its free content -- the TV show -- its producers have teamed up with the company that makes the popular teen virtual world Habbo to create an Idol-themed one. Habbo has built a solid business upon its virtual world by selling virtual goods to teenagers. The new American Idol world will be tied to the show and feature new activities and virtual goods as the show progresses, and will also feature tie-ins from Idol's sponsors. The main content is given away for free, and used to successfully generate further advertising revenues and create interest in secondary, paid products -- like this virtual world, but also the popular American Idol concert tours and other offerings. So why doesn't anybody blast American Idol's producers for giving their content away for free?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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AT&T Text Spams Customers Promoting American Idol; Insists It's Not Spam

from the redefining-spam dept

For the most part, mobile operators have been good about trying to prevent SMS text spam, but it appears that AT&T has gone in the other direction. It's actually spamming people. Apparently it sent a text message promoting the TV show American Idol to anyone who had voted in past American Idol contests or anyone that AT&T considered to be a "heavy texter." I can almost (but not quite) understand contacting former voters. But randomly targeting other "heavy texters" is simply pure spam.

But that's not the way AT&T sees it. In a statement that entirely redefines spam, a spokesperson said that it wasn't spam because they didn't charge people to receive the message. He also claimed it was no problem because people could opt-out of future messages. This shows an incredible (but all too typical for AT&T) tone deafness to the issue. Email spam is already quite annoying. But text messaging spam takes it to an entirely more ridiculous level by proactively interrupting what a person is doing, no matter where they are. At least email spam can be compartmentalized to when you're actually checking your email (and, these days, can be pretty effectively filtered). Text messaging is a lot more intrusive, and for AT&T to claim that this is somehow "okay" because the TV show is "built on texting," is simply ridiculous.

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