Just when we thought it was safe...

Just when one would presume that the highest-rated show on television, a competition that has endured more than its share of controversy, one in which there are screams of foul and fix and conspiracy, would have hired a gazillion techie and literate people to cross its "t's" and dot its "i's", then proofread again just to be certain. It has happened again. Not on the same scale, this time, at least, but nonetheless inexcusable.

Reality TV Magazine is reporting that it's another phone number foul-up.

Four contestants, four numbers. This is not brain surgery. Each contestant gets a unique phone number.

Last time they screwed up the numbers, it affected six of the eleven.

Last night it was all of them. Except one. And, it affected all of the closed captioning. And it's bound to affect, even more, the reliability of the show's voting procedure.

The order of performance was: Carrie, Bo, Vonzell, Anthony. But during the recap, where Ryan plays good cop to the judges bad cop routine and gives out the numbers, each contestant was given the same phone number: Carrie's.

Now, obviously, this error is not on the same grand scale as the one earlier this season, and one might wonder why anyone needing closed captioning would be watching a singing show (even though that's a ridiculous argument), this show cannot afford to give its audience any more fodder for attack.

There are already enough grumblings of phone line irregularities (ask any Constantine fan). There are already those who know that Carrie was annointed Idol long before the crappy auditions began. So you would think that somewhere this show, which brings in the big bucks, could afford someone with white gloves.