AT&T revealed that more than 178 million text messages went through its network as votes by followers of the country’s leading TV show American Idol. The company claims this year’s figure to be more than double of last year’s in addition to being the highest scorer amongst all seasons until now. There were 78 million messages by fans last year..
The mentioned figures don’t wholly include text votes but also other ways using text to interact with the show. It includes answering weekly trivia questions, submitting questions and opting in to receive voting number reminders. Fans that opted for voting number reminders this season sent nearly twice as many votes through text messages than the overall voting population. The number of customers that participated in the same was higher than 70% this season.
Andy Wilson, vice president of national marketing for AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets stated, “American Idol is a smash hit with our customers, so just as Fox raises the bar every year for the show, every season we work to bring our customers new ways to get their Idol fix through our products and services. We feel this season was our best yet, evidenced not only by heavy texting traffic but in the great response to the other terrific Idol-related content we made available.”
Viewers also participated in chat sessions with the game of chance by AT&T. The audience submitted questions to AT&T–hosted chat sessions with current contestants together with participating in AT&T sweepstakes. Sweepstakes was a success with Idol supporters. Audiences were given an opportunity to enter the contest, a chance to visit the American Idol finale and win $1,000,000.
At the Finale festivities, the winner was offered a choice of Samsung Propel phones as well. This phone is AT&T’s full-keyboard phone designed with texters in mind. These phones were given out by x-Idol contestants Carly Smithson, Kimberley Locke, Chikezie Eze, Chris Richardson, Melinda Doolittle, Diana DeGarmo, LaKisha Jones, Paris Bennett, Bo Bice, Hayley Scarnato, Vonzell Solomon, Blake Lewis and Mikalah Gordon.
Latest videos from the former Idol winners Kelly Clarkson and David Cook were available for a quick preview to the audience and exclusive performances were held during American Idol’s commercial break. The fans used the AT&T mobile phones and the video-on-demand library on AT&T U-verse TV along with the online medium to catch a glimpse of the exclusive videos.
Furthermore, out of the top 100 ringtones, American Idol tones constituted 15 of them at one point during the week of May 10. The contestants of the show also illuminated AT&T’s ringtone leaderboard this year.