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Anner advances in Oprah contest, but where did his votes go?
Update: Beth Gebhard, Director of Publicity & Communications for the Oprah Winfrey Network, called at 4:50 p.m. on Friday to explain the discrepancy in voting totals.
She said that an independent third party was hired to scour Web server logs to determine which votes were authentic and which were invalid, having been cast as the result of automated means or originating from foreign IP addresses and external invalid links. All votes outisde of the rules were eliminated, she explained, and all of the contestants’ vote totals fluctuated — some up and some down. Those whose vote totals increased were the beneficiaries of votes that were cast but had somehow been blocked, Gebhard said.
The reason the top eight vote-getters were advanced, instead of only the top 5, was that those eight contestants all remained in the top eight both before and after the verification process.
“Our goal was always to find good, talented people,” Gebhard added.
Original text:
Austinite Zach Anner has advanced to the next round in media mogul Oprah Winfrey’s quest to find a new show and host for her upcoming Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).
Anner, the self-described “wheelchair-bound lady magnet” with cerebral palsy pitched a travel show in his hilarious video submission.
Earlier, some controversy was sparked when Anner, the clear voting favorite for much of the contest, was suddenly surpassed by another contestant who receieved a mysterious surge in vote totals.
Voting practices and tallying continue to be a cause for concern: While Anner’s page on the site shows his as the most popular entry with a vote tally of 9,161,042, the results page shows him only receiving 3,484,018 votes, good enough for a 7th-place finish. While only the top 5 online vote-getters were guaranteed to advance to the next round of auditions later this month in Los Angeles, the site says that producers decided to include three more, sending the top eight contestants onto the next round.
A press release from the Oprah Winfrey Network contained the following:
During the verification process, the final vote counts fluctuated, as votes that could not be authenticated were eliminated from the competition. The verification process did not change the top 8 applicants with the most votes online.
Here are screen grabs showing Anner’s vote total before verification and his final ranking on the website.
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By Jesse
July 10, 2010 12:25 AM | Link to this
Dale, I can't believe you didn't find out who the third party was.
This isn't really a story unless you find out who tallied the votes. How could Jacqueline have gained 2MIL votes that were unaccounted for until AFTER the contest ended? Were the votes hiding somewhere in the system? PR "talking points" can't hide these kinds of details.
Meanwhile Zach lost 6 million votes, supposedly due to invalid links. Type "Zach Anner" into google and you'll see how much legitimate traffic he received. He's brought OWN millions of new users out of their demographic and they're punishing him for it.
Offering him a spot as a consolation when he earned it is just criminal. This is just bad business, bad handling, bad ethics.