The winner of Idols Season 8, Khaya Mthethwa, was South Africa’s favourite throughout the competition. Pay-TV channels M-Net and Mzansi Magic released the voting statistics for this year’s Top 10 Idols Spectacular shows today, which indicate that the voting public rated Mthethwa as the show’s number one performer for ten weeks in a row.
M-Net and Mzansi Magic also confirmed that Mthethwa received the most votes during the Top 18 phase where he competed against other strong male contenders for a place in the Top 10. For the first time in the history of the competition, voters had 100% voting power during the Top 18 phase. In Idols Season 7, for example, the voting public determined five of the Top 10 contestants, while the judges added the remaining five. To provide even more transparency to the early stages of the competition, M-Net and Mzansi Magic also invited listeners from radio stations across the country to the Theatre Phase at Sun City where their applause for each contestant’s performance guided the judges in selecting the Top 18 contestants.
As opposed to the 8,053,612 votes received for Idols Season 6 and the 8,411,8869 for Idols Season 7, this year’s total number of votes tallied a whopping 9,005,342. For the final, Season 6 and Season 7 drew 2,399, 002 votes 1,905,532 votes respectively in comparison with this year’s 2,987,087.
M-Net’s Corporate Communications Manager, Lani Lombard, says the overwhelming viewer interaction is a testament to the popularity of the brand and quality of this year’s Top 10. “Our main mission with each season of Idols is to produce a fire-cracker television series for the enjoyment of our diverse audiences and to provide a launchpad for successful careers in the highly competitive music industry. With all this support, Khaya is bound to become a star player on the South African music scene. We are also immensely proud of runner-up Melissa, who showed how important hard work and commitment is in the entertainment world, and trust that we will hear much more from this fantastic group of Idols.”
The results are based on votes received from the public via MXit, SMS, and the Idols website and mobi-site.
To avoid unfair syndicated voting, votes were limited to 100 per voting period on Mxit and via SMS and to one per hour on the Idols website and mobi-site. Each week, the votes were verified by auditing firm Deloitte.
