American Idol to allow voting via Facebook

For the first time on Tuesday, American Idol viewers will be able to cast their votes online

Like chocolate and peanut butter, some combinations just create a whole new world of wonderful. Good news, American Idol fans/Facebook users! Now your two loves are being combined, as American Idol will now, for the first time, allow viewers to vote via Facebook. 

To be specific, electronic votes will be cast on the show's website, AmericanIdol.com, but users will have to log in using their Facebook accounts, which will verify their identities and keep the voting system fair (or as fair as it can be when the maximum number of times a person can vote in a single voting window is 50). Users can also vote via the toll-free phone-in vote, and AT&T customers can text their vote (AT&T customers can text an unlimited number of votes). AT&T is actually sponsoring the new online voting system, which goes into effect immediately after the next episode's airing on Tuesday, March 1. Only viewers with registered Facebook accounts in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands will be able to participate. 

“We have been wanting to do online voting for several years, and now Facebook has offered us a secure solution and we are ready to go,” said the show's creator, Simon Fuller, in a prepared statement. “The show has always involved a high level of engagement with its viewers through texting and phone voting, and it’s great to expand on this tradition.”

The new voting option is expected to significantly boost the number of votes cast for the show, and Katherine Meizel, author of "Idolized: Music, Media, and Identity in 'American Idol,'" told the New York Times that she believes it will open the show up to a much wider range of voters. 

“For years there have been critiques that suggest the dominance of Southern ‘Idol’ winners is due to the dominance of AT&T in the South, so this could mitigate that issue,” she said. 

American Idol dominated TV ratings Wednesday night as 22.6 million viewers tuned in to watch contestants churn out bland, soulless renditions of Beatles songs (sorry, I'm wearing my pop-culture-sucks hat tonight). CBS' "Criminal Minds" came in second with 13.4 million viewers. 

Image source: AmericanIdol.com