BEDA Day 7: American Idol

Since this was the first year in several that I have not had to worry about studying for classes, I decided that I would watch American Idol this year. In part because I actually thought the show might fall flat on its face with the departure of Simon Cowell and the addition of Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler. I was impartial about Lopez being on the show, but I felt they were really grasping at air with Tyler. I predicted before the this season started that the relaunch would not be successful and they'd try get Cowell back on the show next year. Like many, I had a hard time imagining an American Idol without Simon.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised with how the show has turned out this year. I could tell from the audition shows that the tone was different. The early audition shows this year really focused on what the talent they were seeing at each of the stops and not as much on the crazies that come out the woodwork at the auditions. Steven Tyler was better than I could have ever expected. He brought a new energy to the show and really fun to watch. It took awhile for Lopez to acclimate herself to the show, and she really does know what she's talking about in terms of what it takes to be a music star.

The contestants have been amazing as well. There were 5-6 out of the final 12 I thought had a realistic shot at winning the entire thing. If you're watching the show, a few weeks ago, I predicted that the top five would have consisted of the following contestants: Casey Abrams, James Durbin, Jacob Lusk, Scotty McCreery, and Pia Toscano. Of those five, I thought that James Durbin was the most likely to win it all but at this point, ANY of those five could win.

The one thing I've always been suspicious towards Idol about was the America voting part and there have been some odd voting results this year. That Idol is more of a popularity contest than it is a singing contest should not be a surprise to any one. I'm skeptical of the public voting because I believe by the time Idol reaches the voting stage (or within the first two to three weeks of voting) America has already divided themselves up into voting coalitions. If fans of a certain performer are passionate enough, regardless of how their favorite performs on a given week, they're out in force voting for their favorite making sure they continue. One of the most egregious examples of this possibly happening was Bristol Palin's appearance on Dancing With the Stars where there was some strong, but circumstantial evidence of Sarah Palin's base pushing Bristol through the competition even though she was one of the weaker performers each week.

Now there always seems to be one or two shockingly surprising eliminations during each Idol season. The one I can remember was the elimination of Chris Daughtry, a heavy favorite the year he was on the show but he was among the top 5 or 6 of that season if I remember right. Because of their quality, it has tough, pretty much from the beginning, to predict how this year's crop performers would be whittled down by the voters. A couple of weeks ago, a surprise elimination result got me to thinking about voting behavior. One of this season's stronger performers, Casey Abrams was unexpectedly voted off the third week of audience voting. The judges used their one save of the season to keep Casey on the show and he hasn't been in the bottom in the past two weeks.

The fact that Casey was one of the stronger performers combined with the fact that he had not been the bottom three in the previous two weeks started looking for other explanations for why he was eliminated so early. The only thing I could think of is that the perception that Casey was absolutely safe as a contestant led voters to vote for other candidates.

In other words, nobody voted for Casey that week because everyone thought everyone else would vote for Casey and that resulted in essentially nobody voting for Casey. They saved their votes keeping the contestants who were more likely to be voted off on the show. I'm sure there is a term in political science that describes this type of behavior but I don't know it off the top of my head.

That was two weeks ago. Last week's results were too surprising but if Casey's elimination was a surprise, this week's result was shocking when judge favorite, Pia Toscano, was sent home. Pia was one of my favorites as well and I thought she had a great shot at winning as well if not runner-up behind James. Once again, this result had me wondering if my "well she's safe, so I'll vote for others" theory came into play again.

Either that or the American public are idiots...

I wonder if some political scientist somewhere has looked at the voting patterns of Idol results (or if the raw data of Idol voting results is even available anywhere). Ten years of Idol voting in the United States could produce some interesting data on voter behavior.