American Idol Trivia - The Last Winner/Runner-Up Not to Release Before Christmas

I was a little surprised at first to hear that American Idol Season 11 Runner-Up, Jessica Sanchez, would not be releasing a single until January 2013 with an album to follow in March or April 2013. But with her Glee appearances not starting until 2013 it does make more sense. But that made me look back to when the last time an American Idol winner or runner up did not release their debut album before the Christmas following their season. Let's make a running list of all the winners and runners up and see when they released their debut albums:

Season 11: Phillip Phillips 11/19/2012, Jessica Sanchez Mar/Apr 2013
Season 10: Scotty McCreery 10/4/2011, Lauren Alaina 10/11/2011
Season 9: Lee DeWyze 11/16/2010, Crystal Bowersox 12/4/2010
Season 8: Kris Allen 11/17/2009, Adam Lambert 11/23/2009
Season 7: David Cook 11/18/2008, David Archuleta 11/11/2008
Season 6: Jordin Sparks 11/20/2007, Blake Lewis 12/4/2007
Season 5: Taylor Hicks 12/12/2006, Katharine McPhee 1/30/2007
Season 4: Carrie Underwood 11/15/2005, Bo Bice 12/13/2005
Season 3: Fantasia Barrino 11/23/2004, Diana DeGarmo 12/7/2004
Season 2: Ruben Studdard 12/09/2003, Clay Aiken 10/14/2003
Season 1**: Kelly Clarkson 4/15/2003, Justin Guarini  6/10/2003

The only other runner-up who did not release their album before Christmas of the year of their season was Katharine McPhee, and she ended up releasing hers January 30 of the following year. Season 1 should not count since the season ended in September 2002 so the albums were not released until April 2003 for Kelly and June 2003 for Justin. Once we remove Season 1, we can tally up how many albums were released in each month, and resort by calendar date only (ignoring years):

10/4: Scotty McCreery
10/11: Lauren Alaina
10/14: Clay Aiken

11/11: David Archuleta
11/15: Carrie Underwood
11/16: Lee DeWyze
11/17: Kris Allen
11/18: David Cook
11/19: Phillip Phillips
11/20: Jordin Sparks
11/23: Fantasia Barrino
11/23: Adam Lambert

12/4: Blake Lewis
12/4: Crystal Bowersox
12/7: Diana DeGarmo
12/9: Ruben Studdard
12/12: Taylor Hicks
12/13: Bo Bice

1/30: Katharine McPhee
March/April: Jessica Sanchez

So almost half of the winners and runners up starting with Season 2 have released in November (9 out of 20) with one for every day from 11/15 to 11/20. And 7 of the 9 November Idols were the season winners (i.e. only 2 were runners up, David A. and Adam) so November is obviously the choice month to release. There were 6 of 20 releases in December and all but Ruben and Taylor were runners up in those cases. There have only been 3 Idol debut releases in October, including Scotty and Lauren from last year along with Clay way back in 2003. Those early releases seemed to have worked out pretty well for them. We will have to wait until March or April to see how well that late Spring release date does for Jessica.