Its purely sensationalism. American Idol is an extremely highly rated show, I don't know when saying 21 million viewers wasn't good enough, and that say 30 million votes sounded better. It is the #1 show on television ( http://tv.yahoo.com/nielsen/ ) #1 is #1, how does one quantify how successful a show is when told how many votes were received in comparison to another show who would define their succcess by the number of viewers tuned in? They are basicly implying that the number of votes is equal to the number of viewers. This is especially strange considering that if they said "...21million viewers tuned in last night" I wouldn't have a clue which show was second or how many million viewers it had...21 million-30 million, same reaction from me! Another theory could be that they are subconciously trying to tell you "...see 30 million people voted last night, you aren't nearly as foolish as you thought you were for dialing and re-dialing the phone for two hours, many people do this, 30 million in fact, so it must be a "cool" thing to do, you're not really the loser that you thought you were!" when in fact there is just far less losers because they all had 20 votes each. I hope that no one takes offense to me saying that anyone over the age of 16 voting for this needs to get some help, It's already killing me that there is a possibility that Chris Daughtry might not win this, because children (and childish adults) are going to choose the winner...I don't know why I even watch...but I do! ********************************************************* Edit after Chris voted off: ...See, what did I tell you? This show is terrible! It's NEVER who deserves to win, I'm sure everyone will be lining up to buy Eliott Yamin's debut album...Not a chance. I'm done, I'm not watching anymore I'm less intellegent for it!