Mobile Talk

Well, so Daniel won Malaysian idol huh. So now, we have our first J-Pop look-alike Malaysian idol. With unique talent, dyed-hair highlighted in blond streaks and a waistline that all gals would die for, this winner is different from the typical Idols winner except if you have Taiwan or Japan idol of course. With fresh boyish good looks, he is way different from the conventional winners ie, guys with big build, thus the big lungs or pretty but can-be-polished female pop singers. Noone would be suprised that he won, given the huge amount of votes he garnered from teenage girls all around Malaysia, especially when these girls have been dying to see a young, cute male win the contest after they were deprived of the ability to vote for one in Akademi Fantasia. 

Watching and voting for our Malaysian idol, I could not help but to wonder how it would be like if this contest based on the public’s votes were to transcend the globe. Talks about World Idol had turned cold yet nothing had been done. This is not difficult to comprehend considering the tough task of consolidating votes from the different telcos/celcos all over the world and the various method of voting via the different short codes. Imagine one country consolidating votes from their own country and comparing the votes with those from other countries. That would have been terribly messy and time-consuming.

Besides, would it be fair to have countries with a population of 5million and above to compete with countries as small as an island fitting less than a quater of that population? No prize for guessing which country would have garnered more votes unless the penetration of phones in that country is low. Would Malaysia be able to beat China in this voting competition? I doubt so unless people in China do not watch World Idol or do not know how to sms or use the mobile phone they purchased.

Also, imagine collecting votes in different languages in one database. That would have been a ardous task to decipher, even harder than binary codes.

Thus, if there were to be any World Idol, the only method of voting could be via the Internet which was already done for Miss World. Even then you could argue that some countries have a higher Internet penetration than the rest. The fact that charging the votes via sms was a big revenue generator for reality shows like this does not help either.

Until we have more efficient mechanics to collect global sms votes, World Idol will be something people can only wish to see for now.