Guest Author - Sandra Eggers
Imagine that you’ve just competed in an event where you have dedicated yourself in every way. You want nothing more than to win. It’s come down to you and one other contestant in the final two. The winner will be showered with gifts and the loser goes home with nothing.
And then they announce your name as the winner.
And then they announce that they’ve made a mistake. You didn’t win after all. Sorry.
This is a true story. It happened in the Australian version of American’s Next Top Model. At one moment the winner was Kelsey Martinovich, and the next moment it was Amanda Ware. Only after Martinovich had given her acceptance speech did the host realize that the wrong name had been announced.
We know that anything can happen when Reality TV plays out in as a live performance, but how is it possible for a mistake of this magnitude to be made. The host was wearing an earpiece and had the name written on a card, yet she still announced the wrong winner.
You’d think something as important as a live TV finale would be nearly impossible to get wrong. It makes one wonder how these results are calculated and communicated. Was the competition so close that either woman could have won? The host said that the feed to her earpiece was garbled, so she just went with who she thought the winner was from conversations earlier in the day. That really doesn’t sound very official.
So the first winner went from elated to dejected in one fell swoop. The second winner went from total depression to complete disbelief. What must it feel like having your dream stolen right out from under you, especially when you were so close to having it all. In this case, the first winner accepted the mistake with grace as the second winner continued to apologize.
It would be interesting to know how close the actual voting was between Martinovich and Ware. Was a last-minute change made that not everyone was told about? Were there other factors that came into which could have influenced the outcome? One will never know.
The winner was to have her photo on the cover of a top fashion magazine. After hearing of the mix-up, that magazine announced that they would run both covers. It’s good news for the first winner but kind of takes away the glory from the second winner. Both will also receive prize money.
