Cingular made a max of $4.15 million from text messages from American Idol 4

Cingular’s exclusive text message vote contract earned as much as $4.15 million for the company last year, the Boston Globe reports.

Basically, the paper did the math, finding that “Cingular charges between $19.99 per month for a text package with 2,500 messages included and 10 cents per message on a pay-as-you-go plan, meaning the company raked in as much as $4.15 million in text messaging fees from ‘American Idol’ votes alone last year.” In other words, if they all the messaging viewers had plans, they made a lot less from the show.

Speaking of text messages, late last month The Boston Herald followed-up on my report about text message votes not counting from non-Cingular founds, and found that other companies probably won’t charge for votes sent. A spokesperson told the Herald, “It just won’t work if you’re another subscriber.” Of course, that also means the vote won’t count.