For the last couple of years - voters have had approx 90 mins to cast their votes - now its 15 minutes !!! This is crazy.

The smarter X-FACTOR producers allow their viewers 24 hours to vote.

How is it possible to get a really fair refelction of public votes in just 15 minutes ??

Once upon a time, during the early rounds for the year that Darren Gough won - the vote lines were open ALL WEEK !!

Well the Sunday results show was just silly as it was pre recorded and leaked all over DS!

The ideal solution is to give about an hour.... show the show 6.30-8.30ish- give it an hour or so, then come back at 10ish... for a half hr results show...

But that cant be done when the show is so ridiculously LONG with 16 dancers!

TBH Strictly could benenfit from reducing the amount of dancers in the beginning (although I liked the new start to the series this year..)

Aaah I know but I kinda miss that, was very companionable sitting around waiting for someone's contact to let us know plus someone would always post amusing links like panda pictures to keep us entertained

Also Sunday night telly is rubbish

Back then SCD raised money for Children in Need, so there was a good reason to have the lines open all the time.

Unlike ITV, the BBC don't make any money from the phone voting, so there is no financial incentive to keep the voting open for very long.

I couldn't vote last night, but I've had no trouble getting through in the previous weeks.

PS I DO miss the Sunday show though!

!5 mins is ridiculous to allow people to vote for their favourites. As it happens I tried to vote last week for Rav and found the line engaged for long periods, and the same this week when I tried to phone for Craig.
And remember these two celebs are Supposed to have got the least votes.
Something just is not right.

i agree, i struggled to get thru last night. I wonder if some people try once and give up? the show was 2 hours 20 mins, 1 hour 50 plus a 30 min result show after the lottery and casulty would be the perfect solution

I do agree that phone lines open all week was ridiculous - people hadn't even danced - but in thise days in was for charity.

The BBC can't win, can they. All the derision last year about the fake surprise results show, and still we're not satisfied.

They could have closed the phone lines after instead of before the Amy Winehouse Redemption Show last night. That would have gained 5 minutes. They might even consider an earlier News, with the results straight after John Kettley (weatherman). But the Drama (Casualty) and Sport (MOTD) department bosses wouldn't like that.

Let's not go back to Sunday, please.

I think they should do what they used to and keep the lines open all week, and give the money to children in need. Does anyone know why they stopped doing that?

When they split the results from the main show but left it on the same night it died a death in the ratings. With the newspapers analysing the ratings to death, they can't afford to slip down to 4-5 million, which is what the old results show used to get.

15 minutes is more than enough time to vote. However long the lines are open people whinge about not being able to get through. This way drastically cuts down the multi-voters, which I'm very glad about - it brings it closer to a "one person-one vote" system, and voters who (*shock*) have actually watched the show they're voting on.

I think the BBC does have some scheduling problems. Match of the Day under the contract with the Premier League has to start no later than 1030 I beleive. They are allowed to start it later on one off occasions but not as a regular thing.

If you add in the contract to show the Lottery plus the Beeb's desire to get Merlin adecent audience, you can see the problem.

Maybe they should try two live shows on Friday and Saturday(Len and Bruno fly to the USA on Sundays).

Speaking of Len and Bruno flying to the US? Isn't there restrictions on voting for DWTS? I heard it was something like you get 10 votes per household and you have half an hour to place them after the live show on Monday and the results show is also live on the Tuesday. I'm thinking 15 mins to be lucky enough to place as many votes as you can is ample time

not if you can't get thru

I agree i don't like multiple votes, but i couldn't get thru the first 6 times i tried, after waiting a few mins each time

If the system does as it says it allows through an equal percentage of each celeb's calls.

You don't want to count all the votes you just need to count a representative sample. There's no point counting 5 million votes if the first 100k will tell you the same thing. No point in extra votes either once there is no charity to benefit.

The longer you leave the lines open the more you allow people to multiple vote which means the most psychologically committed voters will have most say - out of proportion to their numbers. Beyond a certain level it will increase the number of votes for anything but the dancing ability on show.

You can't start opening lines earlier because where you are in the running order determines how many votes you get .

You can't put Casualty in the middle because the younger SCD viewers would be up to late and Casualty might now be too adult . They seem not to want to go to 1830 with SCD.

Voting all week beforehand just inevitably creates winners and finalists who pull in their votes from fanbases before the dances are even danced . You might as well decide Wimbledon by letting the public vote for the winner from day one and avoid playing the matches.

Its not perfect but its the best they can do without having the Sunday show and people didn't like that either.

exactly, no system is perfect. I understand that some people are struggling to get their votes through, it happens to be for people they want to vote for and inevitably they are the ones who seem to not have enough votes. It's happened to me though - and even the other way round when I got through far too quickly for my thinking to think that the person I wanted to win the competition was even going to get as far as they did. In other circumstances, I've voted for a certain person in other shows, not been able to get through and this person has gone out.

Incidentally, which voting system does everyone think works enough for viewers to get their votes in on time?

It was part of the scandal that all blew up with telephone voting for Big Brother, Blue Peter and some other programmes. Some programmes accepted telephone votes after the phone lines were closed so they gained extra income although votes didn't count. In the case of Blue Peter, I believe there was a problem with awarding the prize in a competition, so the producers chose a winner at random and the phone votes were ignored. I think that was it anyway. Strictly was taken to task because they denied the telephone voter the choice of whether their money went to charity or not. That's why they stopped giving the phone money to charity altogether.

Casualty is moving to Sunday so that should help the scheduling.

Maybe that is a one off though for next week.

That's because of the Formula One qualifying early in the evening. Strictly Come Dancing is being put back 15 minutes because of it:

5.20 Formula One Qualifying
7.15 Strictly Come Dancing
9.25 Lottery
9.35 News
9.50 Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow
10.20 Match of the Day

The engaged signal happens exclusive of the last 2 digits. Thus, it is irrelevant who you are voting for, if the phoneline is busy for you it would be busy no matter which celeb you were voting for.

Only once you get through are the last two digits counted as a vote.

They do the Eurovision song contest voting in 15 mins - and that involves 43 different countries from Iceland to Azerbeijan.

So 15 mins ought to be enough for SCD which only has votes from one country.

As smokeychan said the idea now is that if even 10 million people phone in and 100k get through the 100k getting through will be in the same proportions to the total calling. As all you need is the percentage vote its a representive sample and more so than an opinion poll as it reflects the actual votes.

There used to be real problems. On the Maria show the Marias on latest in the semi final seem not to have had votes partly because anyone who waited till they performed couldn't get through with everyone still voting for those on earlier who had already had people voting for them longer. There was a claim too that some people failed to get votes in because local exchanges wouldn't take the volume of calls so it was hit and miss whether you got a home vote or not. In theory the worst case was that the last person going on could be the most popular but recieve least votes through blocked exchanges or lines and if their votes couldn't get through in the shorter time they had.

They claim to have solved all those problems and its notable that since shows usually open the lines for everyone after the last performance and/or have a long period after the last singer has sung for everyone to get their votes in.

Re : Maria - I remember one time Simona had literally about a minute between her performance and the lines closing. The voting system on Maria really was an utter farce.

Aoife sang minutes before the lines closed and after 20 minutes when they closed I still couldn't get a vote in for Abi. It was hardly surprising when they came 4th and 5th.

Although I understand totally what you're saying, in one show where I voted for my favourite, I got through pretty quickly. Just FIVE seconds later, my sister accidentally put in a vote for another contestant and the line was suddenly engaged. Maybe it was a coincidence and I'm prepared to accept it because I'm not an expert on how voting phone lines work and that was never my point. All I was trying to explain was that this sort of thing happens, no matter who you're voting for, how long you get to vote for them or how many votes you can place within the voting time.