My problem with the voting is that it isn't all about the dancing on the night - it can't be 'cos the lines are open straight after the results programme. This means that for the best part of a week people are voting either in retrospect or anticipation. There they all sit on ITT saying "vote for the best routines, dancing etc and not the personalities and the number are..." and there I sit shouting but I can't till Saturday!
Granted, I rarely voted before, but I haven't troubled the little red button at all since I realised that even by selling my house and all it's contents and using the money to vote for big brother I couldn't stop Cameroon winning.

Anyway, that's my pet peeve (for this week at any rate!) I'm sorry if I've rambled, but I'm still fairly new at this.

Cheers
Mind

Here is the message I sent to the BBC 08/12/04. I doubt it will be spotted amongst the millions of emails they must get, but what do we think?

It seems everybody was surprised at Aled going out rather than Julian, but I think it was inevitable.

We are told that the judges marks are put in order, the viewers votes are put in order, then the two orders are added together to make a combined order.

This is unfair to the judges as the ordering throws away their marks. It matters not a jot whether there are three good contestants and one bad, or one good contestant and three bad. More viewers will vote for a contestant they know from other shows (e.g Julian rather than Aled), or who has had a roasting from the judges, rather than for dancing skill which may be obscured by camera movement.

What SHOULD be done is for the judges marks to be made into percentages of the maximum possible (i.e. 80). The viewers votes should be made into percentages of the total number received. The judges and the viewers percentages are then added together BEFORE creating the final order of rank.

I hope that my suggestion can be used in the next series, although I have to admit that it's entertaining to have unexpected contestants thrown out.

This final will probably have the result: Jill, Aled, Denise.

Even I voted in that final - and I only watched one or two of the previous progs so I had no particularly loyalty. I just did NOT want CP to win because he was manifestly so cr*p a dancer, so I rang a couple of times for Natasha (even though I don't like her - at least she can dance!)

Yes the judges did mark the freestyle dance last time. If there is a freestyle section in the final I would have thought Denise would have a good chance of winning it as she is more agile than Jill and would probably look more elegant in the lifts!

I have a problem with that too. If you vote before you have seen the dances on Saturday night then you must just be either voting for your favourite celebrity or the dances you have already seen them perform, which surely isn't the point because why have a show on Saturday in that case!! Obviously the whole point of having the voting lines open all week is to maximise the revenue from the phone vote, which would annoy me a lot more if a percentage of the proceeds weren't going to Children In Need!

I have a problem with that too. If you vote before you have seen the dances on Saturday night then you must just be either voting for your favourite celebrity or the dances you have already seen them perform, which surely isn't the point because why have a show on Saturday in that case!! Obviously the whole point of having the voting lines open all week is to maximise the revenue from the phone vote, which would annoy me a lot more if a percentage of the proceeds weren't going to Children In Need![/quote]

Not awfully good with the quoting thing yet
It's not just SCD that has this kind of voting though, Fame Accademy did as well, and that wasn't for charity.
I'm sure if they thought long enough they could find ways to have people voting through the week in ways that didn't influence the evictions (for want of a better word).

Mind

I have seen all of the comments and suggested scores and am sure on the penultimate show the total votes were Jill (6), Julian and Aled (5) and Denise (4) and Julian went through on the better viewers vote. On finals night it is sobering thought that if Denise had won the Judges vote with Julian certainly top of the viewers vote and Denise bottom all would have had 4 votes and Julian would have won the competition. Now THAT would have been a disaster.
Norfbert

Why exactly would it have been a disaster??? It would have been good if Julian had won! (I was voting for Denise!)

Nat
xxx

I thought that the program was about dancing ability else why have professional judges? Clearly, as in the first series, viewers were voting for their favourite person without any consideration of their ability to dance. Even Julian was embarrassed (his own words) to reach the final and although he improved greatly during the series Jill WAS the best dancer and deserved to win. Norfbert

Yes but if it wasn't also about personal favourites and personality...why open the vote up to the public and why have a magazine show on BBC2 to allow these personalities to develop!

Nat
xxx

For your money of course They want you to 'get to know them' so you feel a personal attachment, but of course you're free not to buy into that. I didn't watch any of the offshoots so I did just vote for the person I thought had the best ability & whose performances I enjoyed most. I only voted once during the series, on finals night - and my partner then 'cancelled out' my Jill vote with one for Julian 'because he's so adorable' which he admittedly is, but he can't dance!