Originally Posted by jacquiann:
“As well as the fact that the judges are saving the less popular contestants earlier on (because they are usually better dancers) & this may cause controversy I think there is another reason too that no one else has seemd to aknowledge.
The celeb's imho are more well known & "current" than IACGMOOH (except for maybe KP this year who threw a curve ball into the soup for her own reasons) & CBB. The Beeb don't want to upset them & cause diva strops by publishing their popularity contest votes. They may have problems getting such high profile peeps if the potential contestants realise they may be shown up as coming very low in the voting no matter how good their dancing & how hard they work.
Obviously in XF the powers that be don't care as the contestants are allegedly Jo/e Blogs who have come from nowhere, they certainly shut up & put up as it's their chance to be famous; (even if only for only slightly longer than five minutes). It seems they will allow themselves to be treated any which way Simon wants in the hope they could be the next Leona & not Steve!
I expect the Beeb have to treat their "cast" with a lot more respect & deference.”
Good points. I doubt they featured greatly in the original reasoning not to release (which I'd guess were protection of format from unnecessary complaints), but I could well see the agents of celebs who do appear lobbying along those lines for the figures not to be released, should they consider it. Strictly doesn't generally draft in the greatest of fragile celeb egos, but am sure there are some.
Originally Posted by katrinap:
“Not to mention the field-day the anti-BBC sections of the press would have with it. From the BBC point of view, why give them the gun and load the bullets yourself?”
Exactly. They'd keep sniping away with it, and it'd just unnecessarily exacerbate audience/judge tensions. Now that finally they appear to have sorted out the need to remove a DO when three couples are left, production ought to have reached an uneasy truce situation with its audience. The audience is prepared to quietly accept the judges are going to probably kick out lots of celebs who do better on the public vote along the way than others they keep, but in the end the audience is pretty certain to get 'someone' it wants to the final, whether the judges like that or not. Even releasing the numbers after a series ends would just IMO have fans of particular celebs going over and over the injustice of big lopsided votes earlier in the series and carrying that resentment about them over in to future series. As it is now, without the numbers to back up their speculation on relative celeb popularities, they might grump and groan a little when their favourite goes out, but they kinda just accept that's the way the cookie crumbles ... and resign themselves that the public should at least ultimately get 'someone' to the final.