American Idol Top 24 Eliminations-Sesame Street Syndrome?

I've seen a lot of complaining around the web about the first week of American Idol eliminations. While none of the four eliminated (Janell Wheeler, Tyler Grady, Ashley Rodriguez, Joe Munoz) were going to win Idol, some fans are outraged that they met their demise before others. Specifically, most online sites and fan forums seem to think that Tim Urban and Jermaine Sellers should have gotten the boot, along with Haeley Vaughn and Lacy Brown or the unknown Paige Miles.

We've seen this happen again and again on American Idol. The singers who suck the worst on a given night stay, while contestants who perform okay (but not great) get eliminated. Who could forget the three divas hitting the seal in AI3? What about David Hernadez (instead of Kristy Lee Cook) going out 12th and Michael Johns 8th? How does one explain Sanjaya's unfathomable staying power on the show?

WhatNotToSing ha been tracking and calculating American Idol elimination patterns for years. They assign each AI performance a rating based on feedback from blogs, fan forums, newspaper articles, major media, etc.

So what percentage of times is the contestant with the lowest rating booted? An astoundingly low 24%.

WNTS sites two effects that cause untimely boots: The Mighty Mouse Effect and the Sesame Street Syndrome. In the first, fans of the singer who gave the perceived worst performance rally the troops and ride to the rescue by voting until their fingers bleed, resulting in the next-worst singer getting booted.

This happened last season when Allison was bashed by the judges in the F5 show. Fans panicked and raced to vote for Allison, landing Kris and Adam in the B3 and Matt getting the boot. The following week she was a victim of the effect when Danny's fans saved him after the "scream" incident and Allison was eliminated.

What happened in this season's Top 24 elimination was more likely the Sesame Street Syndrome. This happens when two or more contestants have terrible performances, resulting in the fans of each contestant thinking they only have to beat "the other guy who sang badly". This results in the contestant with the 3rd or 4th lowest-rated contestant getting the boot. At this stage of the competition, the perceived front runners are safe, but all of the other singers should be worried.

In the case of the Top 12 boys there were plenty of bad performances. WNTS rates Joe's performance 6th and Tyler's 8th, while Jermaine comes in second-to-last and Tim scored one of the lowest ratings in the history of the show. Chances are good that that the fans of Tim and Jermaine (and I'm guessing John as well) spent the full two hours of voting calling and texting like the wind to save their guys.

The same thing happened with the girls. Lacey and Haeley had the lowest ratings, but Ashley and Janell were eliminated.The unlimited voting system of American Idol is what causes "shocking" eliminations. Fans of the show have called for revisions of the voting system, but that is unlikely to happen. After all, shock boots are good TV.