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If you’ve been watching American Idol, you probably know that AT&T is one of the show’s biggest sponsors. Now that season eight is behind us, The New York Times is claiming that the telephone company might have helped secure a victory for Kris Allen. The allegedly “provided phones for free text- 
messaging services at two Allen parties in Arkansas on the night of the finals” and that “AT&T reps showed party-goers how to "power text" — cast 10 votes at the touch of a button — which violates show rules.”
Wow. That’s a pretty serious allegation considering that the article goes on to say that those power texts "have an exponentially greater effect on voting than do single text messages or calls to the shows toll-free phone lines."
So far, no one has come forward about seeing anything like this at any of the Adam Lambert parties. Of course, Adam’s fans are now saying that the competition is rigged. I can’t remember a year, though, when these types of rumors didn’t surface after the finale.
Fox hasn’t addressed the controversy but AT&T said: "In Arkansas, we were invited to attend the local watch parties organized by the community. A few local employees brought a small number of demo phones with them and provided texting tutorials to those who were interested."
Interesting… That sounds very close to admission of guilt to me. What do you think?
UPDATE: Fox has released a statement which can be seen here: http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/05/american-idol-a.html
image © 2009 FOX BROADCASTING CR: Ray Mickshaw / FOX
i really hope they didn’t do that. that really sucks if they did
Actually Fox did release a statement:
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/05/american-idol-a.html
why should people keep starting the rumor and stuff? If it’s really what happened, it’s still not Kris’ fault. So why is everyone digging it up? Does hat gonna change the result of American idol or it will only ruin Kris’ future?
It’s mainly the people who are pissed off that Kris won and not Adam.
Thanks, Kathy. The release from Fox came after I wrote the post so I will update it to include a link.
[...] http://www.idolstalker.com/did-att-give-kris-allen-extra-votes/ [...]
Funny how ATT reps show up to give testing tutorials at Kris Allen fan parties, WITH demo phones each of course having its own phone number to count towards the voting. Sad.
I agree with DavidB. Obviously the AT&T reps are fans of Kris and were happy to give out the demo phones. Why weren’t demo phones given to Adam’s fans?
If the voting was absolutely true and correct, AT&T should release the number of votes cast for both Kris and Adam although that might not prove anything either.
Very sad.
Well, Adam fans had instructions on their websites about how to mass text vote. is that any fairer? So a company took this as a sales opportunity and took a few phones to a party hoping to sell plans to these fans. Hey, Ruben had a guy in Alabama who owned a phone bank dedicate his company to vote for Ruben. Crap happens, it does not invalidate the votes or reflect on the contestants.