OK. Apologies is this has already been raised. I'm not watching the show this year, but I've just reading the currant bun about this flash vote thing.

Surely it gives a slight advantage to whoever goes in the bottom two on Saturday's show, as they'll have a full 24 hours to prepare for their performance. I don't mean in terms of rehearsals, which I assume would be prohibited. Although short of watching that person 24/7, I don't know how they could ensure they don't practice a little bit.

But even aside from physically rehearsing, Saturday's 'loser' has 24 hours to come to terms with what's happened and would likely go into the sing off a little more composed than whoever is at the bottom on on Sunday and then has to sing immediately afterwards.

I have been thinking this too plus there will be a lot of sympathy for the first act to end up in the bottom 2 causing them to get a ridiculous boost in the following week.

I tend to side with the professional betters, who for years have been extremely accurate by assuming that the judges' decision is largely predetermined by the producers.

I think it's an advantage for the producers, though, because the audience will no longer be able to see whether they repeatedly put through the act that got less votes. Now the sing-off contestants come from two different pools that aren't easily compared.

the sing off has absolutely no relevance to who stays/goes

In previous years all the acts have rehearsed their sing-off song in the event they fell into the bottom two, but yes there is some psychological advantage I suppose.

I'd actually say whoever loses the Flash Vote is at a disadvantage because if the judges vote goes to deadlock they (apparently) are the ones that go home, which is totally unfair considering it was based upon a ten minute vote the previous night.

That's true. My theory is based on the hypothetical notion that the sing-off is a genuine competition and decisions are based purely on that performance.

But hey, if that were true, there would have been no Jedward/Lucie and no Rylan/Caroline and I might still be watching the show.

Personally I've wound up far more fascinated now that I'm following it as a pop star manufacturing exercise that employs lots of interesting psychological tactics rather than a pure talent competition. It's interesting to watch them adjust to lessons learned and try to guess what will be a hit.

And it still is fair in a way... you win by being one of the ~4 acts who appears to the producers to have legitimate commercial potential and staying that way until the final. And it's very much possible to climb into that position if you perform well, or push an act there as an audience member. We saw it with Little Mix, for example, who based on their editing clearly weren't in the game plan until week 4. Just don't expect all of the final placements to purely reflect talent level.

You could even say the producers are correcting for the public's lack of commercial instincts, or more to the point the tendency of older voters to back acts whose albums they won't buy later.

I was thinking that but then I thought it doesn't matter because they all should be prepared for being in the bottom two no matter what and be rehearsing just incase they end up there.