Is Ricky Braddy a wildcard pick?

From Ricky's local newspaper The Daily Advance
"Don’t count Ricky Braddy out just yet. Braddy, a local contestant on the popular national talent show American Idol, was voted out of the top 12 on Wednesday, but is still in the running as a ”wild card” contestant. Calls to the show’s PR department confirmed this, when The Daily Advance was told on Wednesday that Braddy was unavailable for interviews because he was still “in contest.” Many local fans feel that Braddy simply hasn’t received enough airtime to make him prominent enough in the minds of viewers, which is affecting the number of votes he receives."

And this, a theory from one fan:
“(American Idol) has been doing this for eight years — they know what they’re doing. In the preliminary rounds, you never saw Ricky except for a flash here and there. At this stage it’s all about the drama — it doesn’t get serious until the final 12. Who knows what they’re doing. My personal opinion is they’re looking at how many downloads (contestants) have on iTunes, what the blogs say, and what Idol Watch says. They have a lot of assistant producers who do nothing but watch the Internet. They’re very selective about what they release (about contestants).”

If this is true, we would like to give a shout out to the Idol producers who are no doubt reading our site on a daily basis. If you keep giving Michael "TV time", we promise to give him "Internet time."