Ratings Disaster

I think Alias might be in more trouble than usual tomorrow. Instead of going up against the half-hour American Idol results show like usual (which is boring and short), it's going up against a live one hour American Idol "do-over" show. Great.

Apparently, the bright people over at AI put up some incorrect phone numbers for some of the contestants, and they need to have a re-vote. This makes sense to me, since the incorrect numbers would have you voting for a contestant other than the one you intended to vote for, and would completely mess up vote totals. But why can't they just re-air the same show, explaining that, using the edited correct numbers and have a re-vote? Because Fox wants to add live content to continue their AI-delivered ratings dominance. Grr.

But honestly, how did they get the numbers wrong in the first place? The larger number, spelled out in letters (IDOLS-xx) is correct, but the small number below it which spells out the key numbers for IDOLS is wrong, using a different xx. It's so weird - why would you have done that in the first place, and why did no one catch it? I think the show tonight wasn't even live; it was taped a day earlier. Which begs the question again, how did no one catch the error?

A re-vote? A do-over show? Goodness, American Idol definitely knows how to make itself the constant subject of news.