While viewership for Tuesday’s American Idol finale was up 3 percent over last year’s show, with 97.5 million audience votes cast by phone (up from 74 million last year), the real winner was super sponsor AT&T.

78 million text messages is the total sent during this 7th season of American Idol, an increase of 14 million. 

AT&T believes that American Idol has been the single most important factor in getting more users to text.  In the book Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes, there is an entire chapter devoted to the adoption of text-messaging from American Idol.  In a recent informal poll on AT&T's web site, 22% admitted to having first learned to send SMS messages by watching the show. 

With ratings down 10% overall - it appears the AT&T has won by getting fewer viewers to text more.