American Idol: Should it be a Singing Contest or a Popularity Contest?

No 708, Working Papers from University of Guelph, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: Using the popular FOX TV reality show, American Idol, this paper makes a contribution to the literatures on the design of contests, the allocation of voting rights in committees, and the desirability of low-powered incentive schemes. In American Idol, the judges, who are presumably experts in evaluating singing effort, have no voting power when the field is narrowed to the top twenty-four contestants. It is only the votes of viewers that count. In the 2007 season of the show, one of the judges, Simon Cowell, threatened to quit the show if a contestant, Sanjaya Malakar, who was clearly a low-ability contestant, won the competition. He was concerned that the show was becoming a popularity contest instead of a singing contest. Is this a problem? Not necessarily. I show that, under certain conditions, making success in the contest dependent on a contestant’s popularity and not solely on her singing ability or performance, could paradoxically increase aggregate singing effort. It may be optimal to give the entire voting power to the viewers whose evaluation of singing effort is noisier.

Keywords: American Idol; contests; incentives; tournaments; voting. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 D44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 2 pages
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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http://www.uoguelph.ca/economics/repec/workingpapers/2007/2007-08.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: American Idol: should it be a singing contest or a popularity contest? (2009)
Journal Article: American Idol: should it be a singing contest or a popularity contest? (2007)
Working Paper: American Idol: Should it be a Singing Contest or a Popularity Contest? (2007)
Working Paper: American Idol: Should it be a Singing Contest or a Popularity Contest? (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gue:guelph:2007-8

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