At the end of Fame Academy, I made a formal complaint to the BBC regarding the shambles that was the final. I complained only about the shoe-horning of the final into the Comic Relief show, and was not critical of the voting method or result.

I received the response below today (nearly a month since I made my comments) - which had nothing to do with my complaint! Clearly the BBC must have had a lot of "vote rigging" complaints...


I have complained for a second time with my original complaint to see if I can actually get a response which matches my complaint... I'll keep you posted.

Oh my God have you nothing better to complain about? It's over now, get over it !

The complaint was made at the opportune time. It's hardly britcub's fault if it took the BBC so long to answer it.

I for one, am interested in how large corporation's take on board and respond to the justifiable concerns of their customers.

I didn't vote in CFA so I have no axe to grind.

if noone complains about the timing of the final then we'll have to suffer the same thing next time (if there is one!).

after a really excellent CFA the final was a huge anti-climax, not because of the voting or who won (as it happens I wanted Edith to win), but because the final was a tiny part of the whole comic relief evening and as a result almost 'got lost' amongst everything else that was going on. If they'd given it it's own half hour slot (like the university challenge programme) it would have been much better.

The thing is that the lesson wasn't learned from CFA1 in 2003. Ruby and Will were so overshadowed by the whole Comic Relief thing that the experience was more or less over when they left the Academy in the afternoon.

Good to see the BBC's response though - thanks Britcub. Wonder how long it'll take for them to get back to you again!

Oh my God have you nothing better to complain about? My post was on topic, relevant and of interest to some other forum members... was yours?

Game. Set. Match. Britcub

xxx

A Life... Get one.

Who are you talking to?.

OMG, I still remember this.

It was not so much the time and length allocated to CFA that I was annoyed about at the time but the way the voting lines were closed as soon as Kim Medcalfe stopped singing. Very unfair considering it was the final, it was CR night and there were likely to be people watching simply for those reasons. Let's face it, if you're liking something you don't get up and leave the room so people don't tend to vote until a performance is over.

Still it all appeared pretty soon afterwards that it had all been a vehicle to resurrect Edith's singing career. A vehicle which evidently broke down.

Edith never ever said she wanted a singing career, not before, during, or after CFA.
She never had a career anyway, if you read her biography ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Bowman ) you'll see she has always been a tv /radio presenter.

People have the right to complain and a right to receive a speedy response. Too many people just maon and do nothing.
So, well done.

The got lost in another show explanation is more credible than the paranoid theories. The timing was bad anyway and the show ran late so they just cut the voting time to get a result It was all a mess and the main mess was that the sound was hopeless for all of Edith and the start of Ade which offset any advantage Kim lost with the voting timing.

I don't see an answer. The thing to do is to have the final on the Friday or the Sunday and do it properly with sound and phone votes. They would make a bit more money too. The problem is the obvious one that the evening was thin on talent anyway and without CFA it would attract fewer viewers. Perhaps the finalists ought to perform slots again as guests which would at least let us hear the winner again - but thats not a very good solution either.

Hardly - Kim was a BBC property too and the BBc was pulling in the Eastenders vote for her too. Edith evidently was offered big record contracts afterwards but turned them down straight away according to the reports in the press.