Originally Posted by thenetworkbabe:
“If you end up with a poor dancer winning you disapoint the people who backed anyone else. Its not then clear why any other poor dancer shouldn't have won and the people who back the better dancers begin to think they are watching a show thats decided by other people voting for something else. Its not worth following a show whose result is random. Most people can agree that someone good won even if they didn't support them and spot that someone not very good winning without even a great story behind them is absurd.
Its true you would have a problem if the numbers were onesided and 50% of the audience were backing Chris and another 30% are backing Nat, but if that was true your show would be pretty indefensible in BBC terms anyway. The show would probably fall apart anyway as why would anyone bother being good or judging or training their celeb if the lesson was that winning had nothing to do with the dancing.”
Well, I think we already did this argument before on another thread. And I don't want to get lost in arguments about the personalities of it ... Better, we just call the semi-finalists X, Y and Z. Let's say, X and Y are thought much better dancers by the judges, but a huge percentage of the audience prefer to watch Z dance more ... and they can have a myriad reasons for wanting this. As a producer, unless you want to go work for BBC4 rather than primetime Saturday night BBC1 entertainment, you have to be out of your mind to allow any possibility that come semi-final day the judges can stick two fingers up to your audience and say 'Sorry, you're not getting the person you want in the final ... Oh, and btw, tune in next week to watch the two people you liked less dance the final.' It's simply not sustainable.
The argument you make is for a different show, something to be tucked away on BBC2 or BBC3. The judges of the show were given extra power (two picks effectively for a three person final) for exactly the reasons you suggest: to make sure some dancing credibility was brought to a final. But that only works in the case of a three person final, where the public also get to send their favourite there if that favourite doesn't happen to coincide with one of the judges (often, when they are lucky, it does). It doesn't work in the case of a two person final though. The bottom line raison d'etre for the show is not dancing - it's entertainment. It's deliberately after an audience of 8 million+, not 3 million.
Sorry if this sounds a crude argument, but as I mentioned once before the simple facts from a production POV are these:
People who really care about it being a dancing contest above all else may gripe and grumble if someone other than the best dancer wins, but they'll still be back watching next year ... cos they love dancing and usually a good dancer wins anyway and even if they don't, there's only so many dancing shows on TV. They're not the audience demographic production needs to worry about.
What makes it a high-rated show and primetime entertainment, what sustains its existence and the jobs involved, are the casual audience just looking to park their TV somewhere for a little Saturday night entertainment. These folks are the largest part of the audience, the hardest to get (there are no end of other places they can spend their time) and the easiest to lose. With a show like Strictly, an added attraction for them is the idea they can have some say in the proceedings. The moment you create the possibility that their say is meaningless, the foundations of your ratings are shattered.
If you lose them, you got a show heading for a 4 million rather than 8 million rating ... and then soon you haven't got a show, for casual viewers or serious dance enthusiasts, cos it'll get cancelled. That's the simple truth of it. Hopefully, there's still enough sense at Strictly production to see that and use the contingencies available to them. If they don't - and I wouldn't put it past their hands sitting sometimes in the past - they're flirting with something risky to the show's future.
