Jakarta – Singapore’s Hady Mirza was crowned the first Asian Idol, held December 17, 2007, at the Jakarta International Expo. Mirza pipped his fellow five contestants from Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and India amidst some criticism of the voting system. Disappointingly, many critics were from the new Asian Idol’s home country of Singapore, where bloggers and journalists alike speculated that Mirza won by virtue of accumulating the most second votes – cast for the wrong reasons. Viewers had to cast a first and a second choice vote via mobile phone SMS, with some two million votes received. “Having scrutinized the voting data, we can definitely disprove the ‘second vote fallacy’,” says Colin Miles, Executive Vice-President & Co-founder of i-POP Networks, which co-ordinated the mobile voting across multiple telcos in the six competing countries. He says the system was designed with the full approval of all participating broadcasters, having researched several different ways of conducting regional competitions. Employing an Equal and Even Cumulative Voting Method, the contest strove to create a level playing field given the disparity of population size amongst participating nations. First votes were widely anticipated to be cast along national lines, although number of votes cast in each country had as much to do with the broadcasters’ marketing activity as the size of the population. Result wasn’t quite expected as beforehand judges Paul Moss, Siu Black, Indra Lesmana, Anu Malik and Pilita Corrales didn’t predict Mirza to be the first Asian Idol. “There are actually 3 names that deserve to win, Mike, Jaclyn, and Mau Marcelo,” said Paul Moss. Mirza himself admits that he didn’t expect to be crowned the first Asian Idol. Patrick Schult, Managing Director Asia, Fremantle Media Asia said there had been significant interest in producing Asian Idol again, although candidate selection from some countries might be a problem given that they won’t have a newly-crowned Idol to put forward. In 2008, Idol will enter its fifth season in Indonesia, its fourth in India and its second in Vietnam and the Philippines. Singapore and Malaysia have both staged two seasons of Idol, and the format has also been sold into Pakistan.