Chris Daughtry Fans Unite!

Friends and fellow fans, it was just a week ago when all of us were shocked as Chris Daughtry was voted off of American Idol.  Many of us were angry over the phone issues and some vowed never to watch American Idol ever again.  I think that is a bit of a mistake.  We all owe American Idol for helping Chris to get discovered and I would bet that Chris himself is quite grateful to American Idol.

Still there is a problem; viewers, I believe by and large have lost faith in the and accuracy of American Idol's voting mechanism.  I think this is a shame and hope it will be fixed because there are other talented performers like Chris out there and American Idol can be a great way for them to have a chance to make it that might not otherwise come their way.  It is with this in mind that I sat down to write this edition of the newsletter.

1. How to Fix American Idol

2. Did You Watch This Week (a poll please vote)

3. The Top Ten Cell Phone Deals Online

4. Cool Chris Daughtry Fans Stuff on Café Press

5. No Matter What Watch the Final Episode of American Idol (Why? To Support Chris)

6. What is The Future of This Site and Our Visitors

7. If You Emailed Me and I Did Not Answer

1.  How To Fix American Idol – I know many of you are upset with American Idol indeed I am as well.  With countless fans getting “non working number” messages, hearing Kathryn’s voice on Chris’ number or just not being able to get though it is understandable that everyone is upset.  The reality is that we don’t know how many votes Chris did or did not get, nor do we know how many votes the others got. 

I do want to see American Idol fix this issue which as I understand it happened with Clay Akin as well two seasons back.  I don’t want to boycott this show because with out Idol, Chris would still be working in a warehouse and playing small bars and there are countless other talented artists for whom, American Idol may be their best shot to make it.  

This problem could be fixed quite easily.  First you should know American Idol does not run the phone lines they are run by an independent third party company.  That is a step in the right direction.  Here are the two additional things that would fix American Idol and restore confidence to the viewers.  

• First, while a third party is a great step it is not enough. There should be a second third party company with NO CONNECTION to the one that runs the phone lines.  This second company should be tasked with calling in votes from several different phone types (cell, land line, etc) to verify all lines are running properly.  Each contestant should receive say 500 votes, which would keep things even and not affect the result. This would allow verification that the lines are running properly.  
  
  
• Second, a representative from both companies should come on each elimination show and announce to the audience both the results of the verification test and the actual number of votes each contestant received.  It is amazing how having to be directly accountable to the public helps people keep stuff strait.

I do home American Idol will do something like this.  The public should know how many votes were cast and with careers on the line the extra step seems more then reasonable to take.  May be one of our members could set up one of those snazzy online petitions about this issue?

2.  Did You Watch This Week (a poll please vote) - I have just added a new section to the forums specifically to post and pose polls about anything to do with Chris or rock in general.  I added the first poll “Did You Watch This Week?” and ask that you go buy and vote.  Here is the link - 

 http://www.chrisdaughtryfans.com/ourforum/viewtopic.php?t=181

3.  The Top Ten Online Cell Phone Deals – Quite a few folks asked if I would be seeking donations to support the site or charging any type of dues.  The answer is an emphatic NO WAY.  This is a fan site and I just can’t see charging ya’ll to come by and read what I post and contribute to the forum etc.  However, the site takes a ton of work and the hosting is somewhat expensive given the massive amount of bandwidth it requires.  So I have decided to simply include some promotions to some of my other sites on occasion to help support this site.  

I figured that out of the thousands of members a few might be in the market for a new cell phone soon.  So I put together a page on one of my sites with the top ten cellular phone deals available today.  9 of the 10 are free or free after rebate and that includes Razr’s (Razors) of every Color, The V360 With a Built in MP3 Player and More.  If you happen to be ready for a new phone please consider buying one from our site if you are not in the market just bookmark it for later.  We always keep it updated with the latest top ten deals.  You can visit this page at The Top Ten Cell Phone Options The Retail Stores Can't Touch These Deals!

4.  Cool Chris Daughtry Stuff at Café Press – If you don’t know about Café Press you may want to check them out.  They are a cool site with hundreds of thousands of personalized products about every subject imaginable.  Coffee cups to t-shirts to mouse pads and more.  Of course as popular as Chris Daughtry is there is a lot of his stuff there.  For some reason the link brings up stuff related to other Idol contestants as well.  I will see what I can do about that in the future but wanted to share this with you right away.  Chris Daughtry Stuff at Café Press.

5.  No Matter What Watch the Final Episode (Why? To Support Chris) – I know some of you are out right boycotting AI and while I am not I believe in total free choice so I support you decision.  Yet I suggest you consider watching this seasons finally because Chris will be back and he deserves our support.  Also please do not blame the other contestants they certainly are not responsible for what happened.  Tune it to see Chris upstage the eventual winner!

6. What Is The Future of this Site and Our Visitors?

When I launched this site in February I never dreamed that by now we would have had over a HALF A MILLION page views as of last week.  I just thought it would be a cool site for a really cool performer that I felt was going to change what American Idol was all about. 

It may shock you to learn that we have over 10,000 members to the fan club in less then a full week!

Discussing it with a partner today we realized that here we have a group this large all bonded by the unique rock sound of Chris Daughtry.  This group is made up of young people to some all the way up to over 80 years of age.  We have single folks, married folks, men, women and professional people.  We have some who are gadget and tech people and a few that learned to use the Internet just to learn more about Chris and are still not sure exactly what email is all about.  All of this has come to me in emails in the past week.

So we thought that we might just put together a social networking website (similar to MySpace) but centered on Rock Music, Rock Music Fans and particularly discussing undiscovered bands like Chris’ band Absent Element.  With such a site each member would have their own personal page to post pictures on and introduce what they love to others.  Chris Daughtry Fans,  would be the founding members and the synergies would be wonderful.

This would be quite a bit of work but if there is sufficient interest we will give it a shot.  I have set up a poll to gauge the interest in this possibility.  To vote in it follow this link, 

http://chrisdaughtryfans.com/ourforum/viewtopic.php?p=845

7.  If You Emailed Me and I Did Not Answer – Let me say I am sorry but I just can’t keep up.  I welcome your emails and try to read them all.  I just can’t answer everyone.  On top of my normal email I got over 2000 emails about Chris Daughtry Fans in just the last week.  Again I apologize to all I have not answered.

Final Words - Next week I will have a LOT more including my thoughts on what it means that this week the vote on the final three was split almost evenly with only fractions separating the bottom three,

~ Jack Spirko
Webmaster
ChrisDaughtryFans.com