Is my memory failing me, but when Strictly first started didnt half the contestants all do the same ballroom dance and the other half do the same latin dance on each show. Surely that gives the viewers a fairer way of judging the merits of each couple.

How can you compare Katie & Anton's Foxtrot with Jeremy & Karen's Jive. Isnt that a little bit like comparing apples and pears. Wouldnt it be fairer if they did the same dance

Nope your grey matter is still intact. I've also watched since the beginning and it did indeed used to be the case that 50% of the contestants would do the same Latin dance and the other 50% would do the same ballroom.

I agree that it really used to make it easier to compare both contestants and also choreography as all the contestants were at the same stage when doing the dance (comparing a week 1 waltz with a semi final waltz is tantamount to pointless).

However SCD have more than proved their "If it ain't broken then DO fix it" credentials and have tinkered with everything that was "normal" (don't get me started about the camera work or the pro's group dances) and this has been another casualty along the way.

Yes I know that this would then move into the Ringer vs Non-ringer discussion again, and also the "but those who are doing a Latin will get scored higher than ballroom" (but the same applies when mixed dances), but I also preferred it when you could see dances alongside one another

All good points, but do we honestly want to sit through 6 mediocre-to-bad foxtrots (for example) in one evening? It's easy enough to compare the dances if you know what they should look like - it's just a matter of comparing the quality with which each is danced, rather than putting them side-by-side.

They could probably keep it like week one for the first few weeks, by doing three or four new dances a week, which gives new viewers a chance to familiarise, but having a variety of dances per night keeps the show fresh, and works much, much better from an entertainment perspective.

Your memory isn't failing you, and yes, in many ways it would be fairer to have all the couples doing one of just 2 dances.

However, when the series started there were very few couples compared to now, and it was all pretty new. With today's set up, if you had 8 couples dancing waltz, and 7 dancing cha cha cha in one show, I think it could get a tad boring for both who's main interest in entertainment and for those who watch primarily for the dance content.

That was the case for series 1 to series 7 (up until about the halfway mark of the series when it'd become a free-for-all), weeks 1-5 and week 8 of series 8, weeks 1-3 of series 9 and week 1 of series 10.

I have to say I prefer it the way they have it now. We know how the dances are meant to be danced now, and as people have said, to sit through 7 Waltzes in one night for example, would in my opinion be very boring.