Cingular's southern base skewing American Idol results?
Market research firm the NPD Group thinks it might have an explanation for American Idol's apparent bias toward contestants from the south, pointing to the show's exclusive arrangement with Cingular for voting via text messaging. You see, Cingular is based in Atlanta, and the majority of the company's customers -- some 20 million -- are also from the south; of the 18 million Cingular customers that use text messaging across the country, more than half are (you guessed it) from the south. So, NPD suggests, since only Cingular users are able to vote by text messaging, it would stand to reason that they'd be more likely to vote for contestants from their own region -- and, wouldn't you know it, all five American Idol winners are indeed southerners (even though Cingular wasn't sponsoring the show during the first two seasons). We hope you'll understand if we don't get too worked up over this.[Via RCRNews]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Anthony @ Jun 19th 2006 8:25PM
Forget all the conspiracy theories. Can you believe that guy's only just turned 29 years old? Gees. He looks terrible.
Jason D. @ Jun 19th 2006 8:52PM
Are you kidding me what a waste of time and money to research something about a TV show.
Rusty @ Jun 19th 2006 9:14PM
I'll just be glad when all of these NOTreality shows
die off. Too much crap on TV anymore.
If it wasn't for the History channel, TVland and a few others, I wouldn't even bother turning it on.
People are too wrapped up on these shows, and don't give a hoot what's really important. I saw a google video of one of the late night tv thingys and it was a man on the street piece...they showed AMERICANS pictures of people...they didn't have a clue, UNLESS it was a so called celebrity. Same thing on the radio. Ask them which hollywierd person is banging who and they can tell you that. But ask them what is going on in the real world? Clueless...
bradt @ Jun 19th 2006 9:52PM
I hope that NPD Group in no way gets any tax dollars.
Jordan M. @ Jun 19th 2006 10:04PM
Let me guess, is NPD a northern based company? Seriously, will Yankees or whoever is complaining get over the fact that the people liked a southern dude better than Katharine. You know, people can also use a normal phone to vote or our southerners the only ones with telephones?
And let's think about the fact that if Cingular has 18 million text users, and half is from the south, than doesn't that mean the other half is from the north, meaning it's equal idiots.
Jake @ Jun 19th 2006 10:56PM
5:
For one, he said over half of the text messaging users are from the south. Secondly, the U.S. isn't just north/south, as those terms generally refer to the northeast and southeast. We still have west and central. Therefore, if the south was united behind one potential contestant, and the other three segments were divided, the south's candidate would win.
Who's the idiot?
zed @ Jun 19th 2006 11:19PM
OR, it could mean that people in the south have nothing better to do than text in their votes to these idiotic contests!
Donald @ Jun 19th 2006 11:26PM
It's not that more people who use SMS are from the south, it's that they're more persistent. I deal with customers from that part of the country and almost had someone escalate on me because they had bought $50 worth of prepaid airtime and couldn't use it to stuff the ballot box for whats-his-face-that-won recently.
And they had a whole forum of people who went to the OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT with SMS issues.
And so in conclusion, my faith in humanity is 0.
Anno @ Jun 20th 2006 1:51AM
McPhee is from LA, this is dumb they can't even get their facts straight
Philip @ Jun 20th 2006 2:10AM
whoa, whoa, whoa.... let's just stop here. i myself am from georgia, and could care less about idol or the contestants. i also could care less about a tech-nerd sequel to that little disagreement a few decades ago. clearly we are culturally very different, but we all crave techno-goodness rss-style, right? embrace our differences! ;)
oh, and jordan: shhhhhhh....
ben @ Jun 21st 2006 12:32AM
That makes sense.. Although, alot of the winners won because they were better. However, this year, Katharine should have won over Taylor... He's such a loser.