Hady Mirza Won Asian Idol

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Author: teropong | December 26, 2007 - 1:00 am

FANS in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia were still reeling from how Singapore’s Hady Mirza had trumped their respective vocal Goliaths, namely Mike Mohede, Mau Marcelo and Jaclyn Victor.

The trio were the hot favourites for the Asian Idol title, with Hady, Vietnam’s Phuong Vy and India’s Abhijeet Sawant trailing behind.

Host country Indonesia’s entertainment reporters, for one thing, had tipped their countryman Mohede as the frontrunner.

One of them, Eny Kartikawati, wrote on the Detikhot news portal that Hady’s win disappointed three of the show’s six judges, namely Indonesia’s Indra Lesmana, Malaysia’s Paul Moss and Vietnam’s Siu Black. All had pronounced Mohede the far better performer during Sunday’s show.

The other judges were Singapore’s dagger-tongued record producer Ken Lim, and India’s Anu Malik, who praised Hady’s sanguine struts and cocky ways with the mike stand while performing Beautiful Day as a “damn good” performance.

The one thing most Asian Idol fans in all the six countries agreed on was that the Singaporean was not the competition’s best singer.

Vietnamese state bank accountant Nghiem Thu Hien, 27, said: “I did not think the Singapore guy deserved to win because his performance was pretty lacklustre.”

To neutralise voting behemoths like India (population: 1 billion), Indonesia (235 million) and the Philippines (91 million), the show’s final tabulation of votes was based on half of the total percentages from all six competing countries, plus 50 per cent of the judges’ scores. Even so, each SMS vote for the show’s contestants counted only if it named two countries.

A blogger who goes by the name Toshihiko Atsuyama, whose Ethereal Shard blog is based in Indonesia, pointed out that the “SMS freak” countries – referring to mobile phone users in Indonesia and the Philippines – would not vote popular Victor as their second choice but instead vote for ‘safer’ Singapore whom they thought would not win.

Netizen Heru said on the Indonesia-based blog IndraDiky.dot.com that Hady won the hearts of many Indonesians because his grandparents were Bugis from Sulawesi and he spoke fluent Bahasa Indonesia.

Despite Asian Idol contestants’ crowing about reaching an audience of “millions”, relatively few viewers actually tuned in.

While Malaysia’s most popular free-to-air TV station 8TV and Indonesia’s largest TV network RCTI gave Asian Idol huge publicity in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s extravaganza, the remaining four countries seemed to give it short shrift.

According to a MediaCorp spokesman, more than half a million viewers tuned in to each broadcast here on Saturday and Sunday night. India, for example, has millions of TV viewers who are mad about such reality TV talent shows, but dislike those based on SMS voting, which they call biased and unfair.

Regional media coverage of Hady’s win was also muted except, of course, in Singapore. In Indonesia, only one newspaper – the Jakarta Post – carried a Page One item on it, with a picture of Hady. – The Straits Times, Singapore/ Asia News Network

source : thestar

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