News Roundup

ETA: Check out this Taylor-centric trip report from last night’s Dress Rehearsal by one of Gray Charles “spies”.  Hee.  I love the behind-the-scenes stuff!

News Roundup

While we’re all waiting for Nigel’s post-performance interview, here are a few articles to keep you entertained.

American Idol to Offer Downloads

Americanidol.com will soon be offering downloads of Tuesday night performances for $1.99 (expensive!) that will be available shortly after the show airs.  The producers must see the popularity of sites like Rickey.org, who offer downloads to fans very shortly after air time.  I’m surprised they didn’t capitalize on that sooner.  Last summer,  Rockstar:Inxs offered downloads of all the show’s performances through MSN.com.

Clyde Speaks

Clyde Pickler, now out of prison speaks to the press about his daughter, Kellie:

“‘Watching Kellie on television made time move more quickly’, Pickler told Inside Edition for an interview to be shown Wednesday.

‘I can’t take credit for what Kellie’s done, ‘ said Pickler, who has been staying in a $55 a night Tampa-area hotel room since his release. ‘She’s accomplished a lot in her 19 years of life.'”

Dial Idol or The Posting of This Article Was Rather Indulgent

And here’s an article about DialIdol.com from the Boston Globe:

“It started as one man’s practical solution to a serious pop culture problem: Jim Hellriegel realized it was hard to do laundry and vote for ”American Idol” at the same time.

Not if you wanted to vote multiple times, as most serious ”Idol” fans tend to do. So at about this time last year, Hellriegel, 30, a computer administrator from Cleveland, wrote a program that would use his modem to speed-dial the show’s toll-free numbers. At the same time, he decided to test a working theory. He had noticed that when he dialed different contestants’ toll-free numbers during a two-hour voting window, some drew more busy signals than others. Might it be that each busy signal represented a potential vote?

Over a few weeks, Hellriegel discovered he was right; most weeks, his own bottom-ranked candidates usually got the least votes nationwide. This season, he set up www.dialidol.com, posted a few Internet ads and let online buzz do the rest. By now, some 20, 000 people have downloaded the program, which has placed more than 1.3 million phone calls — sending results back to Hellriegel’s site, where rankings are compiled and updated in real time. For predicting the singer voted off, he boasts an accuracy rate of 84 percent, counting statistical ties.”

And then the reporter quotes….some blogger.  Heh.