Ever wonder why all of the “American Idol” winners have thus far hailed from Southern states? According to information released today by The NPD Group, a leading consumer and retail information company, the results of text-message voting on the popular Fox Network talent show, “American Idol,” might actually affect the final voting outcome. After all, Cingular Wireless has a dominant share of its subscriber base in the South and significantly more of those subscribers use text messaging, than do Cingular subscribers in other regions of the U.S.
Based on recent data from NPD’s Mobile Consumer Track service, nearly half of Cingular's subscribers are located in the South, and more than 18 million (42 percent) Cingular subscribers in the U.S. actively use text messaging. In fact more than twice as many Cingular subscribers (nearly nine million) in the South do so, as in any other region. By comparison just over four million use text messaging in the West, three million in Central states and three million in the Northeast. According to NPD Wireless Industry Research Director Drew Hull, this regional skew might have been large enough to affect the voting outcome.
“Cingular has partnered with the show’s producers to provide text-message voting solely from Cingular phones, so it’s certainly possible that Southern subscribers might have more of a voting edge, than those in other regions in the U.S.,” Hull said. “Had ‘American Idol’ partnered with another carrier with a higher percentage of their subscriber base in another region, the results might have been different.”
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