Its simply not enough time.

In the past - an engaged tone for your "favourite" celebrity was not a big deal. People had 90 minutes to call - and did not have the "distraction" of watching the live show. Now the time is too short and the show is still running during the voting period.

Possibly but more importantly IMO is that the judges marks don't give a big enough spread to take the lowest scored dancers out of the running as much as they would have previously.

There were only 6 points separating the dancers this week not a big enough margin- the new system is killing the show this time for the judges!

Have to say that I liked Zoe and James but knew there would be an upset this week as thats the way the show goes- it could be worse though if Craig carries on getting through and more good dancers go?!

This change was made to rescue the Beeb from any recurrence of the 3-3-1 farce last year. Alas while sovling one probem with good intentions they created another, demonstraging that the Beeb cannot walk and chew gum at the same time -- something we have known for years.

Your mark out of ten please, for the Beeb management.

I don't think it matters at all. 15 minutes, 2 days. You ultimately get the same result - just more votes.

If you are going to vite (why would anyone waste their money this year!!) then you are more likely to do it whilst the show is on anyway.

Will be interesting to see if the they revert back to the 2 shows next year, main show then results show, although liking the number of professional dances in the break.

I think this is the best thing they've done to the show. The vote-off is now completely unpredictable.

I prefer it , the other side are dragging their voting out for 24 hours, people loose the will to live by the time the results are drawn, at least with strictly its quick and relativley painless and by the time they have had a world champ do a bit and the star turn its back to the nitty gritty

Its nothing to do with voting and all to do with the scoring system. The public really can influence the vote now - and are.

I love all this unpredicatability. Itsmaking the show a better one, not worse. I think it will also give us better dancing and there will be no sitting on their laurels at the top of the scoreboard. Ali is lovely and all that but I really feel she needs a kick up the backside, hopefully the dance off will give her that. Zoe was the same - all this worried about being sexy lark when she'd given far more on FW (unfortunately she left before she got a chance to sort herself).

Agree that it will give a boost to those 'good' dancers who find themselves in the dance-off but it could also give us a cr*p final.

It won't be a crap final.

This year is no worse than other years half way through and its a damn sight more exciting - any of Phil, Natalie, Chris or Ricky G is worth of a final place 'aka Darren Gough or Matt Dawson stylee' , Jade worthy of a place 'aka Densie Lewis stylee' and Ali or Ricky W 'aka Colin J or Alesha stylee'

The only person left not worthy enough for a semi or final is Craig and he will go, just as all the rest of the rubbish dancers always have, eventually. Probably when people start voting in reasonable numbers.

ONLY 4 weeks until the seperate results show is back and i cant wait, i dont think the giant 2 hour format works imo

I think any of the first 4 mentioned (and I'm not against more than about half of them particularly) would be an entirely new type of finallist. They're not on the level of a Dawson/Gough (their averages after 7 dances are a good 2 or 3 marks lower than either of the those two, even with today's inflated scoring system) but they're obviously above a Parker/Clary.

What they strike me as being like is the wodge of good but not great people (usually women) who slide out in the weeks before the final. A Letitia Dean, a Christine Bleakley, a Jodie Kidd, a Carol Smillie, a James Martin.

I can't see that extending the voting time would make a blind bit of difference to the result.

The voting trend is established pretty quickly I should imagine. By keeping the lines open longer, you are going to generate more votes but the same outcome.

The 15 minute voting time has improved things for me!

The tempatation to keep on returning to the phone to make multiple votes has been taken out of my hands, and a good thing too. I'm saving a fortune!

Now I just give a couple of votes to my favourites and then go back to enjoying the fab pro dances.

The engaged tone makes no difference. It doesn't matter if dancer A gets 12500 votes or 12, 500,000 votes as long as the person they are up against gets 10,000 and not 10 million. As long as people's calls are connected or not randomly the result wll reflect the prcentage of people voting for each pair.

More time to vote gives people who have some non dancing reason to vote more time to multi-vote - unless as one poster pointed out they have some sophisticated technology that allows them to dominate voting in the 15 minutes.

What may matter is coming on early which seems fatal because for some reason many voters can't organise themselves to be there for the start .......or being female and good which gets you no votes.

The problem isn't voting time its who is voting for what and who isn't voting on the basis of the dancing. Thats partly those voters fault and partly the shows fault for suggesting ridiculously irrelevant reasons to vote like getting the most hopeless case to Blackpool and partly because Bruno seems to be drumming up the anarchist vote that they had redesgned the judging team to deal with.

I don't think thats true. Darren and Mark had real journey stories and high achievement. Phil has journeyed nowhere. Nathalie hasn't gone far. Chris has been going backwards and his journey is short and Ricky G is a joke act and worse than people who went early in other series. Even Matt Dawson was much better at what he was good at. None of that lot are near to a Gethin, Austin, Louisa in ability and no better than a Cherie, Jodie or Christine- they would be in the SF solely because there was no better male to be there.

Jade is a weaker version of Denise Lewis - Jade can't act well , isn't very musical and doesn't do anything that complex and Denise had a bubbly personality by comparison. She might just make the SF but she would have to improve a lot to look right in a final or to look anything other than weak competition to Ricky W. Zoe at least could act, if james had given her more to do dancing wise. Laila has real potential but she can't get the Latin right with Anton.

Ali and Ricky W may be more Rachel and Colin which might be interesting as a Rachel might beat a Colin given what happened to them. Its entirely likely though that if someone like Phil can get to the last 2 we will get a journey winner who happens to have been on no journey.

I wish they would go back to the "original" format of having a separate results show later in the evening (or even on the Sunday if they have to).

As I mentioned on another thread Strictly is the highlight of my evening and so I start recording it while I cook supper, open bottles of wine etc and then I start watching around 8 pm. As a result I am not able to vote.

I know I could watch in real time but it would spoil my enjoyment far more by doing that than seeing better dancers voted off early.

If they just went back to the way things were then I would have time to vote and all would be well in my world .

I couldn't agree more Fifteen minutes isn't nearly long enough IMO. Also I preferred the show when it had a break in the middle, at the moment I'm starting to fidget in my seat and just wish it would just get the the results because there is quite a lot of 'filler'

Having two programmes with a break (for Casualty etc) in the middle was the best format IMO, especially while there's quite a lot of celebrities left in the competition. It gave my bum a rest () and revved up the excitement for the final section of the programme, where I didn't mind watching all the show dances, singers/bands etc because I'd had that all important break and we had longer to cast our votes!

Why do they always fix something that doesn't actually need mending

I have said this on other threads since the show started. It simply is not long enough-it treats the show in the same way as the dire Norton lead reality shows. This is the first time I have voted and not found an engaged tone-which would suggest a lack of interest
The BBC is naieve when it comes to Light Entertainment these days and seemingly have inadvertently tried everything which would make the show struggle this year. From cast to scheduling to PR its been a mess.
Next year is very important for SCD.

The short voting time doesn't affect the result at all. A vote of just a few tens of thousands has a margin of error way, way below 3%. In other words, you could get ten times the vote and it would be hardly more accurate.

Far more influential is the new points-scoring system which puts the duffers within easy reach of the judges' favourites at "half-time" in a show. So if the duffers include Tuffers, he's easily going to overtake the one or two couples needed for him to survive.

Watching Monday's ITT made me wonder if James Jordan is going to take Chris' coaching in-hand now, mostly off-camera. We could have a Darren Gough-style improvement coming up, in which case he might even win the thing.

There was an interesting post by a mathematician on the BBC It Takes Two board analysing this very point in some detail.