Once again tonight, as it does every year, justice has not been served and the Great British Public gets it catastrophically wrong again.

Every series, the "people power" of a talentless celeb boots out a decent performer. The Chris Parker, Diarmuid Gavin, Fiona Phillips, James Martin and now Georgie Bouzova Factor poisons the contest again. Any rational person must feel sorry for Spoony and Ola, just like you must have for Will Thorpe last year.

As the GBP continually employ the sympathy card (I bet Tarby got more votes than Spoony after it was announced he was leaving!), the voting system needs to be balanced more in the favour of the dancing, not the popularity vote.

Here is how it should go

judges vote as is
viewer vote as is but only allowed between the two shows, a la X Factor
bottom two dance again (optional)
judges vote on who to keep
if tied, goes on original score
if tied, goes on viewer vote

This system has the following benefits

It removes the ability to vote repeatedly throughout the week for either favourite celeb or professional, making the dancing performance on the night almost irrelevant.
It increases the power of the judges at the end: they have in the past given possibly inflated scores to try and counteract the voting surge towards the lesser, more heavily criticised couples
It can cause some more entertaining rucks between the judges

The potential criticism of shutting the voting lines through the week and cutting the money going to charity can be easily countered by increasing voting capacity on the night. X Factor easily gets more votes in just a couple of hours. Hopefully, this would reduce the "carpet bombing voting" of certain factions of the board that taint the competition.

Of course, if they ran a phone number check and banned anyone from voting who has ever rung into The Mint, Quizmania or their ilk, i think the issue may go away by itself.

As a final parting shot, what happens now as we are a couple short. there is no way that the series will end a week early as the final must go head to head with the x factor final.

HCG

ok fair enough but never mind voting public what about the voting farcical that is the judges

as you see in my original post, the judges aren't without criticism. I seriously doubt the scoring as it seems based on a scoring system from 1 to 10 that doesn't have the numbers 1, 4 or 5 in it. I also am not keen on inflation at times in the scores caused by the need to offset the idiotic public voting.

Generally they get it right most of the time: Craig/Arlene too harsh, Len/Bruno too soft, end result: pretty much where it should be.

What's your main issue with the judges? Interested in your opinion or specific examples?

HCG

well a 6 for peters tango and a 10 for louisa jive miffed me alot bearin in mind there that the scores can't range to 11/12

The judges can only vote out 1 of the bottom 2 til so far in the series, I will point out Louis Walsh and the band from Ireland on the X Factor as an example of this

Just out of interest, did you vote yourself?
I didn't and so cannot complain about the result - however shocked I might be.
At the end of the day, it's a bit of fun to raise money for Children In Need and so I have to respect people's reasons for dialling the numbers they have this week.

For me, Craig is by far the best. OK, he's harsh to the point of rudeness very often, but he calls it like it is which if the audience would shut up long enough to hear him, would be very constructive for the couples. (He did rile me up tonight, though with his comment about how he feels about Emma - personal opinions should be left out)

Arlene...... if I hear that woman whittering on once more about some cute guys "hot hip action", or someone's "horrible arms" I'll chuck up ! She is so biased towards Mark it's quite toe-curling !!!

Len..... he's become his own biggest fan and I used to really like his comments because they were very relative..... now he's just a cariacature of himself. He needs to become more objective - after all, he is the only true ballroom expert and we need to hear more of what he thinks "dance-wise"

On another post, I quoted Bruno as a smarmy italian midget with ADHD - and that's the best things about him. He is so ruddy biased, I want to punch his face in. Many posters have already asked.....but what WAS that 10 all about tonight ???

Rant over..... thanks for letting me vent my anger !

i do vote, but i get frustrated as you almost feel like you have to vote tactically, rather than for the best performance.

Do you spread across the top three or four performance, do you go for the best of the lot or do you try and keep in who may be under threat (good but lower end of table) because of the sympathy voting?

The reason the revenue goes to Children in Need is because the Beeb can't be seen to be making profit from the phone lines. That's why the Radio 1 SMS service for example is standard rate unlike almost all other SMS services, for example.

Take away the Children in Need angle and SCD would still exist.

HCG

True.

Louisa wasn't perfect but then it is Bruno, what else do we expect!

HCG

I would rather let the public vote and the bottom 2 with the least votes are voted out by the judges. I wonder how many people have already voted for their favourite to win when its a week before they dance again?

Does anyone know why there wasn't a twist this week?

It was on the BBC site but the BBC have taken it down. Strange........

They obviously wanted this outcome for the shock value, to get more people voting, but if I was Spoony I would be very pissed off

To be totally fair here, Spoony is out cos its very likely he came BOTTOM of the public vote...

The judgin on X Factor is very diferent as the judges are personally involved with the acts and competing against each other, so impartiality is completely out of the window.

They would all kill another's strong act if it improved their own act's chances, Maria Lawson anyone?

HCG

Do i remeber readign soemwhere that they all look at different aspects to some degree and vote accordingly. I seem to remember that Bruno was the less technical and more perfromance focussed judge.

It may explain the 10 more tonight

HCG

A ridiculous amount. And a ridiculous amount doing so repeatedly!

Look at how it went with this board and James Martin last year. At least this year, the lust objects appear to have more natural talent

HCG

Impartiality and SCD, come on your having a laugh about the judges, they do have their favorites, Craig comment tonight re Emma, also Craig, Bruno and Arlene work in showbiz and so may know some of these celebs personally,so impartiality is impossible for them.

I thought Craig's comment was a bit suspect. He knows saying that will piss people off (fans of the other dancers)and blatently show his favouritism. Look at what happened to Zoe.

Correct. But in a rational world he wouldn't

Factors why he gets less votes

1. He's relatively unknown to the target audience of the show. Smaller fan base, very dnagerous in this show
2. He has a very attractive female partner. This may irritate a certain bitchy element of the female viewership who won't vote even if they were the best.
3. He's black. As has been widely discussed in the media, race seems to be an issue in UK reality shows. Almost without fail, a white Anglo Saxon protestant will win a UK reality show.

Why he should gets votes:

1. He ruled in last week's group dance
2. He scored 27 points tonight: that's a decent score
3. He obviously enjoys it: Georgie doesn't
4. He can dance: to paraphrase Arlene, Georgie needs to learn to walk!

HCG

As I mentioned in another thread I think they'll do something similar to what 'Big Brother' (controversially) did this year. At some point in the series viewers will be invited to vote one of the departed couples back into the show.

2 in the final instead of 3?

I might be in the minority but I like how the voting is done!

I hate shows where the judges get the final say (it would be a disaster on SCD you'd might as well hand the trophy to Emma now) or the public get the final say

This way they have to impress us and the judges they almost get two chances and makes the competition less predictable

I may have overstated the impartialty aspect but the X factor judges are actively trying to outdo each other. The SCD judges have no vested or financial interest who wins: there isn't a record/managament deal at the end of this show for them

There is nothing wrong with judge's favourites as it's pretty clear that their favourites are the best dancers. If Len Goodman started giving Fiona Phillips 8's for example, you would have a point.

HCG

Can you imagine just how dragged-out THAT show would be? To fill an hour the 2 couples would have to do about 4 dances each and even then we'd still have to put up with about 20 minutes of Brucie fobbing us off with jokes that the Christmas cracker factory rejected.

In the final, let the public go wild but let's take that element out until the end. We should not be deprived of talent and forced to watch crap.

Emma is not a forgone conclusion. Arlene gets moist over Ramps and Bruno is a Lytton lover.

Personally, I think this year has the highest standard and a pretty open field. Emma, Louisa, Ray and Mark are all front runners but Claire, Matt and Carol are all strong performers. Peter is likely to come unstuck with Latin, just as Jan did (and she was very lucky to survive)

By the way, nice username. Says a lot Only kidding
Last edited by homecinemaguru : 21-10-2006 at 23:59

What's so wrong with 4 dances ? In Series 1, they had to do a ballroom, a latin, a show dance and a dance voted for by the public for the final. That was a true test of how much Natasha and, dare I mention the name...... even Christopher Parker.... had learned over the course of the series.

Perhaps they have gotten it too easy in recent finals ?