Two Idols winners: fair or fiasco?
Both Sasha-Lee Davids and Jason Hartman were declared joint Idols winners in a press conference on Friday, 8 May 2009 by M-Net and FremantleMedia, the format owners of Idols. This is proving to be a controversial “world first”, a result of technical glitches having occurred in the public SMS voting. [poll]
Said Patricia Scholtemeyer, CEO of M-Net, "M-Net's Idols Season V was an unprecedented success and the public participation throughout the season was phenomenal. For the first time, the voting public had 100% say in the outcome of the competition to decide the winner. Therefore, every vote counted and it was imperative that the votes were counted accurately.
"When M-Net realised that not all the SMS votes cast before the cut-off time at 6.05pm had been received and accounted for, we immediately began corrective action to understand fully the true situation. Following the recount, it turned out that there were 1.3 million votes for Jason and 1.1 million votes for Sasha-Lee, which is evidence of the immense public following that both our Idols winners have garnered during the course of the competition."
SMS votes
The final week's voting period ran from Monday 27 April at 7.30pm until Sunday 3 May at 6:05pm during the final live show. When the votes had been verified after the cut-off time on Sunday evening, Davids was the winner. However, when the regular post-show internal analysis was conducted the following morning, it became apparent that an unusual amount of SMS votes that had been sent in before the 6.05pm cut-off time, had not been received and thus included in this result.
M-Net management took action and called in KPMG to independently conduct a recount and verify the actual results. As a result of this process, it has emerged that Hartman did in fact receive more votes than Davids. Various media reports have it that M-Net has blamed the cellphone operators for the glitch, which they in turn have denied.
Unexpected scenario
"This competition is driven by the public's vote. While we acknowledge that this was not a scenario that we had expected or wanted, we are delighted with the outcome as both Jason and Sasha Lee are true Idols. We will be following their careers closely and with great interest," concluded Scholtemeyer.
According to New24.com, sponsors have agreed to double up on winners' prizes and the Idols judges are in disagreement over what is fair.
For more:
- Bizcommunity poll: What's your opinion?
- The Times Online: Calls for Idol to hand back prize
- The Wild Frontier: Idols changes winner: The biggest media blunder ever
- New24.com: Idols judges talk about scandal
- News24.com: 'Jason shouldn't get an edge'
