Idol Talk: Has Our World Been Rocked?
by Vera H-C ChanMay 5, 2009
When last we Idol talked, Danny Gokey had redeemed himself, Allison Iraheta got a break, and fans of Adam Lambert had to get out the AED and self-fibrillate over the shock of the Broadway warbler landing in the bottom three on "American Idol."
Note we didn't say bottom two, even though Kris Allen left Lambert and Matt Giraud to scurry to safety. The blogosphere has been in an uproar over what one Buzz Log commenter has called "such a Producer Gimmick...Trying to make all of us think that Adam would be in the bottom two..." Mebbe. With no more vetoes, the only suspense left is a juicy Conspiracy Theory! Bring it on!
The biggest factor of course is, the show's built on passion, not fairness, as callers try to make multiple votes. Another factor is (as searches and a Los Angeles Time blogger reveal) that this Fox audience is getting on in years. Could it be that while Lambert gets attention, he may not necessarily be warming the cockles of a crotchety audience who's seen it all? Then again, the LAT says the older crowd tunes in on Wednesdays, not on performance night, so they're probably not voting anyhow.
Whatever the reason, all this messes up projections on who's going to win it, although we'll try our darndest next week. Below's a table that that lays out a profile of each contestant's top online supporters from the past 7 days, as well as what the "Idol" audience has been looking like.
| "American Idol" Final Four Web Supporters | |||
Contestants By Search Rank |
Core Age, Male & Female | Proportion of Female Searchers, All Ages |
Leading State Supporters |
| Adam Lambert | 35-44 | 73% | Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin |
| Danny Gokey | 30-54 | 71% | Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, New York, Alabama |
| Kris Allen | 25 and under | 62% | Arkansas, California, Texas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania |
| Allison Iraheta | 17 and under | 60% | California, New York, Texas, Virginia, Illinois |
| "American Idol" (for comparison) | 35-64 | 66% | Arizona, Oregon, Wisconsin, Ohio, California |
A few notes on the above:
- Among Allen's state searchers, his Arkansas home base has a nine-fold lead over No. 2 California. That doesn't bode well for a top 2 spot for the Conway (Ark.) boy. At least the college-aged crew likes him.
- Iraheta primarily appeals to the urban areas, and being from blasé Los Angeles tends to be more of a drawback (think Katharine McPhee). Then again, so's Lambert.
- A Search heat map shows Web passions for Gokey, while more widespread than Allen and Iraheta, are surprisingly lukewarm. More heat maps in an upcoming post.
- Lambert, who has a tenfold Search lead over Gokey, gets queries about his sexuality, but the majority of his lookups (93%) focus on his performance.
- Just for the heck of it, we looked into the five top "Idol" states' searches (see last row) to see whom they favored: Same ranking order, with Lambert on top. Go figure. Maybe only conspiracies make sense after all.
