Who Put The Y'all In 'Idol'?

It's a really great theory, and it does count, but let's look at the raw numbers those shares translate into.

Greensboro-High Point: 218,000 households. Birmingham: 234,000. Atlanta: 642,000.

By comparison, "Idol" scored higher in 40 other markets before New York shows up. It pulled a 24 percent share in Gotham. But that translates into 1.1 million households -- and potential voters. In Los Angeles, the show rated even lower, at 21 percent, but that still meant 773,000 households.

So the show penetrates more deeply in the Southeast, but that still doesn't mean more voters. "Idol" does terribly in Knoxville, Houston and Nashville, the official home of country music.

Besides, there is the Split Vote Conundrum -- that many people voting for their hometown favorite would dilute the regional total. North Carolina has three people still in the running; how could that be a benefit compared with the lone California contestant?

So let's briefly consider the South as influence, both as a geographic entity and as an idea.

"Idol" kids grew up in the postmodern era, long after the throes of the civil rights movement, long after interstates and Wal-Marts had made small towns in north Alabama look a whole lot like small towns in Michigan. The old days are gone. Listen to two iconic Southern recordings: Hank Williams's (Alabama) "Your Cheating Heart" and Robert Johnson's (Mississippi) "32-20 Blues." The first is twangy beyond description and the second is almost incomprehensible.

People don't talk like that anymore. But a softer Southern accent persists, as does the cultural memory of things long gone. There is still an emphasis on church and family, both entities that, in the course of Southern life, heavily influence music, particularly among the working class.

"There's still an awful lot of old-school singers who got their starts in church, and many mainstream country musicians still do a gospel album," said John Reed Shelton, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina and one of the region's most respected observers. "Everybody tends to go to church, and Southern evangelical Protestantism, both black and white, emphasizes and rewards musical performance."

Plus, as Wilson, the Mississippi scholar, points out, the only way a lot of kids stuck in one-horse towns know that they can find life-changing fame and fortune is on the stage.

B.B. King, Elvis, Tina Turner, Kenny Chesney, Faith Hill, Ray Charles, Leontyne Price, Johnny Cash -- pick a genre, and somebody from a smaller town than you with two fewer pairs of overalls than you has made it big time, some to the status of American icons (not idols).

So, too, has Kelly Clarkson, the first year's winner, gone on to a career that outlasted her 15 minutes. Few people doubt that Fantasia probably has more raw talent than anyone on the show so far.

Perhaps most intriguing, as the fifth season continues, is to consider how much more talent remains out there in the hill towns and dust buckets of the South, and will rarely be heard past the local 4-H show, halftime at the high school football game, or at Sunday church.

Perhaps that is sad, perhaps it is comforting. More likely, it is just the way it always has been.