American Idol Season 6

American Idol Season 6 began on Tuesday, January 16, 2007. The premiere episode of the season drew a massive audience of 37.7 million viewers, peaking in the last half hour with more than 41 million viewers.

The Top 24 Contestants were, females: Alaina Alexander, Amy Krebs, Antonella Barba, Gina Glocksen, Haley Scarnato, Jordin Sparks, LaKisha Jones, Leslie Hunt, Melinda Doolittle, Nicole Tranquillo, Sabrina Sloan, and Stephanie Edwards. males: AJ Tabaldo, Blake Lewis, Brandon Rogers, Chris Richardson, Chris Sligh, Jared Cotter, Nicholas Pedro, Paul Kim, Phil Stacey, Rudy Cardenas, Sanjaya Malakar, and Sundance Head.

On February 22, 2007, around 32 million votes were cast and 4 contestants were eliminated, those being: Amy Krebs, Nicole Tranquillo, Paul Kim, and Rudy Cárdenas. The following elimination week, A.J. Tabaldo, Nicholas Pedro, Alaina Alexander, and Leslie Hunt were voted off. The final week of eliminations before the Top 12 was announced ousted Antonella Barba, Sabrina Sloan, Jared Cotter and Sundance Head.

As usual, the Top 12 will slowly dwindle down one by one each week before the next American Idol is crowned. The theme of the March 13, 2007 show was a tribute to Diana Ross. On March 14, 2007, Brandon Rogers was voted off. However, DialIdol, a prediction site, had Brandon listed in 5th place overall — with Stephanie Edwards in last place for the second week in a row. On March 19, 2007, all 11 remaining contestants performed to the theme of "The British Invasion." The next day, Stephanie Edwards was announced as being voted off. After that, Chris Sligh, then Haley Scarnato were voted off.

The website Votefortheworst.com, which encourages people to vote for the least talented performer each week, endorsed Sanjaya Malakar. Satellite radio personality Howard Stern joined the push for Sanjaya, telling listeners that making the worst singer the American Idol would shake things up and make the program more interesting. However, on April 18, Sanjaya was voted off.

The Top 6 singers performed inspirational music as a part of the first ever "Idol Gives Back" telethon-inspired event which raised more than $60 million in corporate and viewer donations. None of the singers were eliminated, and the votes from that week will be added with the votes from the following week to eliminate two singers. Both weeks saw an extension of the regular two hour voting window, which was increased to four.