Sanjaya and that Indian call-center rumor
Posted: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 6:00 AM by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Filed Under:
TV
April 5 Update: The Associated Press has written a story on the Indian call-center rumor, agreeing that it's a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
Americans love a good conspiracy theory, apparently. And in the case of Sanjaya Malakar on "American Idol," there are as many conspiracy theories as there are viewers. Some blame teenyboppers who are in love with Sanjaya's flowing locks, some blame Vote for the Worst and Howard Stern, some blame the fact that Sanjaya once lived in Hawaii (which gets its own time slot for voting).
Some, of course, cite the fact that Sanjaya is half Indian-American (no one mentions the fact that he's also half Italian-American). And that theory has spawned a related theory: That citizens of India working in call centers for American companies there are flooding the phone lines while they're at work with votes for Sanjaya, out of some kind of national pride.
Sheldon Liber of AOL's Blogging Stocks was one of the early proponents of the "it's all the fault of Indian call centers" theory. On March 9, he wrote "Now I have no idea if this theory has any relevance, or if I'm the only one in the country who agrees with the judges that this kid should have been long gone, but I do know that large numbers of viewers are voting to keep him on the show and the call centers in India have the ability to make cheap calls to the United States like no other constituency."
As you can see from the comments that follow his post, many people criticized him and called his theory racist. Many pointed out that India has its own version of "Idol," and that Indian citizens are more interested in the World Cricket Cup than in an American version of a talent show. Said one commentor: "[If you knew] the call centre employee demographic in India, [you would know that] they are not the one that watch these shows."
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Sanjaya Malakar
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But the comments that made the most sense to me were those that wisely pointed out it's unlikely an employer would stand for this kind of repeat calling on company time, and that it would not go unnoticed.
One person posted: "[It's] very clear that no one here has an idea of how a call center works. Most of the so called Indian call centers are US corporations with a call center based in India. Every outgoing call is not only logged but also monitored as even if it's cheap it still costs to make an overseas call and the corporations everywhere want to save money every possible way."
And another echoed those sentiments saying "Seriously, if you operate a call center and hundreds of calls go to a 1-800 number every week, what would you do? It's a matter of paying for bandwidth, worker productivity etc."
"American Idol" doesn't really address this issue in the show's FAQ, although they do address power-dialing machinery, saying, vaguely, "Production will have in place weekly monitoring procedures designed to prevent individuals from unfairly influencing the outcome of the voting by generating significant blocks of votes using technical enhancements. The producers reserve the right to remove any identified 'power dialing' votes."
Liber later backed down a bit on his call-center theory. He later posted "it has become clear to me that numerous factors are in play and the theory is a stretch for plausibility" and "upon further thought I believe that this is far fetched."
But unless Fox comes out and makes some kind of statement (unlikely, because what would they say?), this rumor will likely be around as long as Sanjaya remains on the show.
MORE ON SANJAYA:
• Hair slide show: Sanjaya's follicle fashion
• Will Sanjaya save or destroy 'Idol'? | Vote
• Seattle choir friends watch Sanjaya on the show
• Howard Stern tries to take credit; Fox says he's nuts
