I’ve seen a lot of complaining around the web about the first week of AI 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%.
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