That busy signal is ‘Idol’ theme song

The right to vote isn’t at issue with “American Idol.” It’s the fight to vote that counts.

After Fantasia, Diana and Jasmine sang their hearts out Tuesday night, tens of millions of fans rushed to phone in votes and decide the Fox TV talent contest’s two finalists.

So did reporters from The Associated Press. They dialed, lightning fast, as the last strains of the chipper “Idol” theme song faded.

Too late. A bleating noise sounded the cruel message: The line’s busy, chump. Try again. And again. And again.

In a perfect world, the 24 million or so “Idol” viewers would be able to vote early, often and easily for their favorite. But beleaguered phone systems, trying to slurp up a tsunami of calls with a straw, can’t help but choke.

Busy signals met more than 100 calls placed by the AP from Los Angeles and the home states of Fantasia Barrino of High Point, N.C., Diana DeGarmo of Snellville, Ga. and Jasmine Trias of Mililani, Hawaii. A total of four votes were cast.

Trias was voted off Wednesday night leaving Barrino and DeGarmo in next week’s finale.

On Tuesday, the phone gods were mischievous. The very first vote from Raleigh, N.C., for Barrino got through. The next nine calls, made over 90 minutes, didn’t.

It wasn’t any easier from neutral territory. Anchorage, Alaska, scored a DeGarmo vote on the 12th try.

In Hawaii, 14 attempts from the capital city of Honolulu were met by busy signals or a recording announcing “all circuits are busy now” and inviting the caller to try again later. On the 15th call, a vote was finally cast for Trias.

Georgia was downright spooky. Using a land line, the second call went through and a vote for DeGarmo was placed. But after hanging up, the phone went dead for 17 minutes. As soon as the dial tone returned, a call to the “Idol” line led to a busy signal and another dead line, this time for four minutes.

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It was worse via cell phone. Between 9 and 9:20 p.m. EDT, 79 calls resulted in busy signals, while three led to loud beeps and a blinking “CALL FAILED” message.

Phone woes
Phone congestion has been a thorn in the side of “Idol” viewers and a mixed blessing for Fox. The network can cite the volume as further proof of the show’s popularity, beyond its high ratings, but has to fend off complaints of network inaction in the face of fan suffering.

Also, suspicions were roused after several of the most talented contestants got the ax, raising questions about vote manipulation, intentional or otherwise, by overeager viewers.

“It is a flawed system at best,” viewer Lawrence Pauley of Huntington, W. Va., commented Tuesday via e-mail. “He who has the fastest finger or the most sophisticated redialing system will cast the most votes.”

Pauley said he wasn’t sure that Fox had an obligation or means of fixing the problem. Besides, his own votes have gotten through — after two or three dozen attempts.

Hearing repeated busy signals is akin to banging your head against a wall; it can make you nuts, fan or not.

“You’ve got to be realistic on this, people,” urged Kevin Laverty, a spokesman for Verizon. The company funnels its local toll-free “Idol” traffic to the long-distance AT&T network but, when volume surges, can’t move all the calls along.

That fact applies whenever a flurry of calls are generated, whether for a TV show, a California earthquake or other major event. (The highest calling day on record for AT&T was Sept. 11, 2001, when it handled nearly 431 million calls.)

If Verizon heedlessly slammed AT&T with excessive calls it could jam the network, Laverty said Tuesday. He points out, reasonably, that other emergency calls and related services need to be protected in the public interest.

But for true “American Idol” fanatics, there is only an abiding interest in making sure their choice wins. It’s been that way from the show’s start three seasons ago.

“I woke up the next morning and my thumb and index finger were still jerking back and forth. I thought I had injured myself,” Brian Perfetto of Palmdale, Calif., told The AP in 2002 after dialing 1,000 times in an heroic but failed effort to save contestant Ryan Starr.

Viewers can vote repeatedly in a two-hour window following the show’s conclusion in their time zone. Votes also can be cast through AT&T Wireless text messaging, which has avoided traffic jams.

Brighter outlook?
Fox stands by its plan, and by American know-how.

“The national telephone system utilized for voting on ’American Idol’ features the most sophisticated technology available,” the network said in a statement Tuesday. Each week, tens of millions of calls are “received and fairly tallied,” with the votes of computer-assisted power-dialers identified and discounted, Fox said.

There is one network concession to the crunch. Fox is doubling the window of voting opportunity, from two to four hours, for next week’s May 25-26 finale. The contest that started with 70,000 contenders will end up bestowing a record contract on the winner.

In last year’s showdown between finalists Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, viewers had an extra hour to vote — and that still wasn’t enough. Of the 24 million votes cast, according to Fox, Studdard won by 134,000.

But on that same day, Verizon, the nation’s largest phone company, received 116 million more calls than average, while SBC reported an increase of 115 million calls, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

That indicates a logjam in which millions of potential votes never got through.

The outlook is brighter now, said Verizon’s Laverty.

Last Tuesday, more than 5 million call attempts (not all aimed at the contest) were made through Verizon to toll-free numbers on AT&T’s long distance network, and 1.23 million were completed — a 21 percent improvement over the previous week, he said.

Scientific advancements aren’t needed to feed the optimism of true “American Idol” believers.

“I’ll keep trying,” Janice Neal of Snellville said Tuesday as she attempted to vote for hometown girl DeGarmo. “Must be bad reception tonight.”