TWO SA IDOLS

A world first for Idols South Africa.

In a world first in the history of Idols, South Africa has two. Due to the unusual circumstances surrounding the SMS voting process during the final show on May 3, M-Net and FremantleMedia, the format owners, have agreed that both Sasha Lee Davids and Jason Hartman are declared winners.

Says Patricia Scholtemeyer, CEO of M-Net: “M-Net’s Idols Season V was an unprecedented success and the public participation throughout the season was phenomenal. For the first time, the voting public had 100% say in the outcome of the competition to decide the winner. Therefore, every vote counted and it was imperative that the votes were counted accurately.

“When M-Net realised that not all the SMS votes cast before the cut-off time at 18h05 had been received and accounted for, we immediately began corrective action to understand fully the true situation. Following the recount, It turned out that there were 1,3 million votes for Jason and 1,1 million votes for Sasha Lee, which is evidence of the immense public following that both our Idols winners have garnered during the course of the competition.”

The final week’s voting period ran from April 27 at 19h30 until May 3 till 18h05 during the final live show. When the votes had been verified after the cut-off time on Sunday evening, Sasha Lee was the winner. However, when the regular post-show internal analysis was conducted the following morning, it became apparent that an unusual amount of SMS votes that had been sent in before the 18h05 cut-off time, had not been received and thus included in this result.

M-Net management took action and called in KPMG to independently conduct a recount and verify the actual results. As a result of this process, it has emerged that Jason did in fact receive more votes than Sasha Lee.

“This competition is driven by the public’s vote,” concludes Scholtemeyer. “While we acknowledge that this was not a scenario that we had expected or wanted, we are delighted with the outcome as both Jason and Sasha Lee are true Idols. We will be following their careers closely and with great interest.”