He’s been called a teenage lounge lizard, the worst singer since infamous season two “American Idol” contestant William Hung, and the potential downfall of Fox’s reality show juggernaut. But Sanjaya Malakar has survived to become one of eight finalists left on the show despite harsh criticism from judges, and now fans are speculating whether the polarizing contestant has a real chance to win. Leading the charge for Malakar is the site VoteForTheWorst.com, the four-year-old brainchild of Chicago teacher Dave Della Terza, which encourages fans to vote for “Idol” contestants that seem to have the least chance of winning. VFTW has championed past “Idol” hopefuls like Scott Stavol and Anthony Federov who seemed to have little chance to win, but this year the site seems to have found a more popular choice for the worst. Despite another middling performance, Malakar wasn’t even in the bottom three for voting last week, indicating that he could make it through several more rounds. Howard Stern has added his support to the Malakar movement as well, though some fans on messageboards have complained that voting for him makes a mockery of the show and have sworn to stop watching if he wins. Della Terza talks to Media Life about Malakar’s chances at victory, Fox’s reaction to his site, and how to determine the worst.

How did you come up with the idea for this site?
 
After watching “American Idol 2,” I realized that this was a carefully crafted reality TV show and not the singing competition that it promotes itself as. The producers put all of these people in the competition who have shot at winning, be it terrible singers or people with no back story that end up leaving early.

So Vote For the Worst says, “Why not help those people stick around to make the show more entertaining?” More people want to watch the William Hungs [rather] than the Carrie Underwoods anyway.
 

How do you choose "the worst" to encourage people to vote for?
 
A lot of factors go into choosing who our candidate is. Usually an element of bad singing is involved, but there are other things that are more important, such as personality, whether the contestant is entertaining, whether the contestant goes against what the producers want in a winner, etc.

“Worst” refers more to how the producers/America see them, when they're actually our favorites. We love the people we vote for, though most people think we're mocking them.

To us, Sanjaya makes the show fun. Without him, we'd be bored, but with him, the show is really interesting. I think most people are catching on to that.
 

How much traffic do you receive?
 
We received 22 million hits to the site last week alone. Right now, we're ranked by [web traffic tracker] Alexa.com as the No. 2 “American Idol” web site, right behind americanidol.com. So apparently we've started something that America is really embracing!

 
Some would argue that this makes a mockery of the voting process. What's your response?
 
The voting process encourages us to vote for who we like the best. We like Sanjaya the best, thus we vote for him. VFTW can only vote for one person, so if say Gina Glocksen's fans are mad at us after she was booted last week, they should have spent more time voting for Gina instead of complaining about our site.

The day Sanjaya possibly goes home, it will be because we didn't vote enough, not because people figure out how to topple VFTW. That's why we encourage everyone to vote as much as they can every week.
 

Have you ever heard from the contestants whom you promote?
 
I've talked to Brenna Gethers, who was one of our picks during season five. She's awesome, she gets what the site's about. When she realized that she was on a TV show and that it wasn't really a singing competition, she changed her strategy to make sure she would get camera time.

The judges basically went out of their way to insult her every week and call her performances terrible, but I've met her since, and she's an absolute sweetheart and she's an amazing singer. She's now the lead singer of the band The Bomb Squad and she's doing really well for herself. It just shows that anyone on the show can make a career for themselves if they play their cards right.
 

Do you ever envision a "worst" contestant winning?
 
I don't think any of the people we vote for early in the game will ever win, but it's definitely possible. Last year Taylor Hicks won and we voted for him for the last 4 weeks. In the final three, the votes were separated by less than 1 percent between all of the contestants, so our votes may very well have helped him that week. You never know.

We try not to take it too seriously since it's just a cheesy TV show, so if our contestant wins, that's great. If not, we just vote for someone else. I hope that VFTW never becomes obnoxious like the rabid 12-year-olds who watch the show and obsess over it.
 

Have you ever heard protests from Fox or "Idol" producers?
 
Two years ago, the producers released a statement saying that VFTW didn't have enough hits on our site to have an impact. And last week, the producers were out in full force, saying stupid things to embarrass themselves. Nigel Lythgoe compared the site to a fly buzzing around a cow, and Ken Warwick said they could trace where every vote is coming from.

What is this, Big Brother is watching you when you vote for “Idol?”

Ken should have added an addendum: "We can see who is voting, so those people voting for Sanjaya will never succeed. We'll get rid of their votes! But umm... you kiddies at home, vote for your favorites. We would never throw out those votes. For now. I think. And if Sanjaya is your actual favorite, we won't throw those out either. Unless you live within a 2.5 mile radius of someone who has been to Votefortheworst.com. Then those votes won't count. But you can drive to your friend's house and cast votes from there. Unless they mistakenly ever voted for Antonella. Then we don't count those either."

I mean seriously... how ridiculous can you get?
 

Who do you think will win this season?
 
I think the person that the producers picked to win before the show started is going to win.

Who is that person? I'm not sure. It could be Melinda Doolittle, could be Jordin Sparks, could be Blake Lewis. I don't think it's anyone else as of right now. So it's one of those three.

I highly doubt that even if Sanjaya becomes the most popular person on the show that the producers would allow him to win.