The American singing competition show American Idol (2002–2016; 2018–present) has generated controversy over the years in numerous areas. Many of the controversies have centered on the show's voting process and results, and in later seasons, gender bias against female contestants, as well as contestant comments. Another major source of controversy that has spanned multiple seasons has been the activities of contestants prior to competing on the show such as past recording contracts in contravention of the rules, and undisclosed criminal charges. Voting controversies Voting has been the biggest source of controversy with American Idol becoming embroiled in numerous controversies in various seasons over the voting process and its results. Season one autodialer power-voting Around 100 people using auto-dialing software and their home dial-up modems reportedly placed as many as 10,000 votes a night. However, FremantleMedia, which produces the show, contended that this represented a 'statistically insignificant' proportion of the overall voting, and Fox insisted that the system was fair. Nevertheless, concerns were raised about possible unfairness in the situation of a tight vote. One of the show's executive producers Ken Warwick later indicated that equipment was put in place afterwards to address this issue but it has not detected any such problem since its installation. Season two finale vote Out of 24 million votes recorded following the season two finale, Ruben Studdard finished just 130,000 votes ahead of Clay Aiken. There was confusion over the winning margin as host Ryan Seacrest initially announced it as 13,000, later again 1,335, and then finally corrected by Fox as 130,000. There was much discussion in the communication industry about the phone system being overloaded, and that potentially more than 230 million calls were dropped just by AT&T and SBC (over 30% of the market), making the results statistically invalid. The phone lines may have been running at capacity that made a near-tie inevitable, with the winner potentially decided by text-messaging which was unaffected by capacity problem. In an interview prior to the start of the fifth season, executive producer Nigel Lythgoe revealed for the first time that Aiken had led the fan voting from the wild card week onward until the finale. Season two phone scam During the second season, a phone scam operation based in Salt Lake City, Utah was discovered, in which people were tricked into believing that viewers could vote for their favorites through an 800 number, rather than the