Melinda, you deserved better

As the sun rose over North America on Thursday, the continent awoke to find itself in a terrifying new entertainment landscape -- a world without Melinda Doolittle.

It was a dark night in the Idol Dome on Wednesday as the great Melinda Doolittle, an early favorite to win -- Simon Cowell’s Miss Consistency and perhaps in raw talent the strongest singer ever to appear on “American Idol” -- was brought low.

Throughout the night, the final three seemed on the brink of exploding in nervous jitters. Jordin and Melinda clutched hands throughout the show. Blake leaped out of the chair at every break and danced around the death couch. Remarkably, through it all, the three remained to outward appearances the best of friends and entirely good spirited about the looming outcome.

From the start the crowd seemed on edge. The many children, who have formed unshakable coalitions behind Jordin and Blake for weeks, screamed to their favorites at every dead moment -- forcing Jordin to nearly break her arm off waving and mouthing “I love you.”

As the show went off air for the last time this season from the Idol Dome, the crowd stayed on its feet for several long minutes, hailing Melinda. The judges took to the stage to wish her well. The three little girls in front of me who had been screaming “Go, Jordin!” all night cried in unison now, “We love you, Melinda!” Jordin rose to the awkward role of comforting her big sister.

A great had passed from our lives. But as we know now, “Idol” has gotten too big to produce just one superstar a season. Melinda Doolittle belongs to the world now, and the world no doubt will be waiting for her.

Still, there are questions in the air. Can this voting process be for real? With this week’s outcome the show, which inspires more obsessive-compulsive dissection (see my previous 47 or so columns this season) than any in the history of television, has thrown blood into its followers’ shark tank.

Behind the curtain, the woman at the helm feels your pain and understands exactly how the show plays into your most obsessive tendencies. Speaking in her Burbank office the day before the final three performances, Cecile Frot-Coutaz, “Idol’s” executive producer, addressed the issue of whether and how the voting could be messed with. A French emigre to the U.S. with a pleasant, thoughtful and open demeanor, Frot-Coutaz is chief executive of FremantleMedia North America, which along with Simon Fuller’s 19 Productions oversees the “Idol” industrial complex.

“Every year is different,” Frot-Coutaz said. “There’s years where it’s obvious a contestant will stand out -- like the Carrie Underwood year. And there’s years when it’s less obvious. The first year was really not obvious at all. We thought Justin Guarini was going to win it. This year, I think, was more of a journey.

“If you rewind the clock 12 weeks or 15 weeks I probably would have said, ‘Well, it’s going to be between LaKisha and Melinda.’ And now one of them is gone already and two people have emerged, making a lot of progress every week and really growing, which I think is what the show is about.”

Like most of the other “Idol” producers, Frot-Coutaz believes that transparency and choice are crucial to “Idol’s” success -- the audience’s belief that this is their show and everything is out in the open. She thus expressed chagrin at conspiracy theories about the show’s voting system.

Frot-Coutaz ran through the process. “It’s not mysterious, really. Where do I start?” She sighed, then explained that the toll-free numbers are managed by AT&T;, which has agreements with the local exchanges that put the calls through. Another company, Telescope, tabulates the raw data, analyzes it by area code and turns it into results.

“But if at any point anything looks different or that we may have questions about,” she continued, “we have the ability to go back to AT&T; and to the labs and say, ‘We’d like to see all the minute-by-minute data on area code, whatever, 201.’ And they can dig into the data and sort of give us that level of detail.”

What would draw her attention? “Occasionally we’ve had situations where two people at the bottom were very close, so when that happens you want to go back and just make sure all the phone lines work properly everywhere so that you know, the result is the results.

“We’ve had a few situations that were a bit hairy. The show goes out at 6 p.m. live on the Wednesday and by the time the phone lines close, it’s like 2 or 3 in the morning. It’s actually quite a decent amount of time to do some data analysis if we need to. And the AT&T; guys, you know, they’re great, it’s what they do all day long. They’re very quick.”

Much discussed in “Idol” pundit circles is the practice of automated or “power” voting, facilitated by websites such as DialIdol, which provide tools for repeat dial. Equally discussed is a line of small print in “Idol’s” official explanation of voting procedures that states that the producers retain the right to disqualify votes if they see evidence of power voting.

Some in the “Idol” conspiracy community have pointed to this as a possible way producers might fix the results. However, Frot-Coutaz stated that although the show has the ability to spot and quickly disqualify power voting where it may occur, “it turns out that’s never happened. Think about it: There’s millions of votes per contestant. So when someone goes, that’s hundreds of thousands of votes usually between two contestants. So to make a difference you would need to have a lot more of these power-dialers than people claim there are.”

As with many in the “Idol” orbit, the universe’s most watched show represents only a part of Frot-Coutaz’s empire. For her, presiding over Fremantle’s North American operations means keeping tabs on a stable of properties, both created and acquired by the company.

“American Idol” is seen as the most American of programs, but the show’s entire package -- format, logo, theme music -- is part of a worldwide brand at the forefront of a globalizing television marketplace.

“We’re all about creating formats or acquiring formats and producing them in as many countries as possible. We’re probably one of only two content companies that operate on a worldwide basis,” Frot-Coutaz declared. “Idol” airs in “30 markets. And it’s succeeded in every one. It’s never failed. Now, some places did better than others, but it’s never failed.”

Asked what gives a show universal appeal, Frot-Coutaz gave a non-”Idol” exemplar.

“ ‘America’s Got Talent’ has traveled incredibly well in a very short period. One reason is everybody, every country, has a variety of talent ... jugglers, magicians, dance groups, bands, ventriloquists, you name it. And whether I’m French, Polish, American, British, Australian, German -- those will be entertaining to me. And the bad ones will be as entertaining as the good ones.”

[email protected]