American Idol: Evidence on Same-Race Preferences

Abstract

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Who will be idol? The importance of social networks for winning on reality shows

“…He found that the racial composition of the contestants affects the viewing of black and non-black households, such that as the share of black contestants increases, the black households' rating increases, whereas the non-black households' rating decreases. Lee (2006) also found strong evidence for same-race preferences in the 1 Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Idol).…”

“…to the best of our knowledge, there have not been any economics studies examining the relationship between social networks and viewers' behavior in reality TV shows, except for the aforementioned study by Lee (2006) on same-race preferences. The economics studies that do exist on reality shows investigate the structure and rules of the contest.…”

Discrimination Data Analysis: A Multi-disciplinary Bibliography

“…Television game shows are a typical example, where discriminatory choices of participants can be studied in a controlled environment. Discrimination analysis has been reported in (Antonovics et al, 2005Bagues & Villadoniga, 2008;Levitt, 2004), with data gathered from the Weakest Link game show, in (Lee, 2009) with data from American Idol TV contest show, and in (J. A.…”

A Social Network Analysis of Occupational Segregation

“…the "mating taboo" in Wong, 2003 or the speed dating preferences in Fishman et al, 2006), among very young kids (e.g. Hraba and Grant, 1970) or among audiences of television shows (Dates, 1980, Lee, 2006). 7 The difference in the use of informal job networks among professions is also documented.…”

“…it actually solves the maximization problem (38). Define the feasible set C = {μ R ∈ [0, 1], μ G ∈ [0, 1]|g(μ R , μ G ) = 0}.…”