Tuesday 8 May 2007

Anthony Callea never won Australian Idol

It struck me when I heard Anthony Callea referred to as "the winner of Australian Idol" that, in a very real way, he did win. He came second, but he got his recording contract and much more popularity and recognition than the actual winner, Casey Donovan. So I have to wonder what happened. Was Casey not that popular? If so, how did she get so many votes?

My primary theory is this: viewers of the second season of Australian Idol would have seen Guy Sebastian appear there. He made a comment to the contestants that went something like "Shannon Noll got the better deal, because he got more time to make his album and none of the contract restrictions I had". Therefore I believe that the viewing public gamed the last episode of the series to give the "real" prize of recognition and no pressure to Anthony: they voted backwards. After all, if the real prize is second place and there are only two contestants left, it's easy to manipulate.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Any voters care to elaborate?
PPS - Either confirming or denying would be acceptable.

1 comment:

Erin Marie said...

To be honest, I don't think that the voting Australian Idol public are that intelligent.

I think that they wanted Casey to win to 'show everyone that a big girl could win', but then, as predicted, she couldn't sell albums because of her image. In short, they voted for her personality rather than her talent, and she was the loser.

I didn't vote that season, so I can't really say, but being an Idol fan, that would be my best guess.