This thread is hilarious.

I completely agree . However if we had the votes for Saturday it would prove one way or another if they used the judges votes + public vote in the dance off or just the public vote. I know that surely it must have just been on the public vote, or the dance off would not have made any difference to who went out, but I just find it so hard to believe that Louisa got less votes than Emma.

It would also be really interesting to see viewer votes for past series, though I can see why they wouldn't want to realise figures for a series still in progress.

That's the wrong way to look at it - the FOI act is an attempt to change our culture to a "If there's no overriding reason not to, information should be freely available by default".

Access to information should be a right, not a privilege.

I agree completely with you DavidJames, and would really like it if precedence could be set for this kind of programming. Leaving aside the legal aspects that at the moment may be germane to the issue, I think it does, as you point out, have a bearing on the current state of our society and its inherent powers structures.

I think the television vote to some extent mirrors and replicates the idea of free choice and ‘people’s verdict’, the principles of democracy even, albeit in the realm of popular entertainment, (which one cannot dismiss to be trivial in our current social structure). If these underlying principles of our society are being used/mocked/mirrored in the format of a TV show, it behoves us to challenge the ‘state’ in this case the BBC, to release any information which will make our expression of choice more transparent.

The answer to this thread has been given several times, i.e. this information isn't covered by the Act in question; any more than such information as details of what you spend your money on using a debit card is covered for a bank, or home accounts kept on your computer.

The Act doesn't give everyone access to any information they want nor does it cover all information & the BBC is under no obligation to disclose the information you have requested to anyone other than the charities regulators.

We have no right to access the information, nor is there any valid comercial or legal reason for us to do so, & they have every right to refuse to give it.

Nothing to hide, just one of those things you have to get used to in life.

I think I remember from the X factor last year that some of the Sunday papers managed to get hold of the voting figures - during the time when the "judges" decided between the last two. They manged to show not exact figures but who was definitely ahead of the final two.

Surely the BBC could do the same.

I would just like to add that if they can't/ won't release them as actual figures why can't we have them as percentages? I think that they obviuosly change each week so why would it affect the competition- percentages or just places in a leader board like the judges would cause no-one embarassment for being last in the board because no one would know actual figures.

I think that if they can manage this in other programmes then they can here. I think the Beeb needs to think about changing this for next year as the transparency may have negated some of the issues people are having with this series.

I don't see what it would matter if they released the voting results once the SCD series is over. I'm still trying to work out how Louisa got less votes than Emma during the dance off.

It would show that all is above board. They have to know the figures to calculate how much money goes to Children in need.

I don't think that Louisa did get less votes than Emma. I think that the judges scores did actually count in the dance-off. That would mean that to beat Emma, Louisa would have to get more than 4-times the public vote than Emma! Which probably made it kind of impossible for Louisa I guess! Does that make any sense? (it does in my head ! )

Indeed, it does show how blindingly simple it is to affect how people act:

1) judge is nasty to a contestant: people vote for them.
2) Professional judges praise someone more regularly than someone else: general public believe this is overriding favouritism and do not vote for them based on nothing but a feeling.
3) The now obligatory conspiracy theories about why things happen on shows rather than, the again, blindingly obvious: it happens becuase it happens: people dance, the judges give the marks they think they are worth, any bit of blatant pant-wetting favouritism by the judges can be seen and is denounced and in the same breath the denouncers blather on about their personal favourite who could do no wrong and would still get a vote if they stood in the middle of the floor and did a 'dad-dance' for 90seconds.

Somewhere in there I meant to say: there is in fact less free-will in the voting than people think there is.

This SCD forum should be studied by Psychology students they would have a field day on the ease of the manipulation and the self-perpetuation of 'facts' and rumours.

After the tedium of last weeks episode I am going to stop watching the show but will carry on reading the forum to view the comment from a totally impartial view point.

It's more fun than the program.
Last edited by Alfster : 14-12-2006 at 23:45

Which cynical reading may actually explain the close a correspondence with the democratic process in our systems of governance. Dear god, Frankfurt school, you have corrupted me.

I dont think it does.At the end of an normal show Bruce says when we combined the viewers and judges scores, you two were bottom.At the end of the dance off he said when we counted all the votes the couple with the least votes ........... Louisa.

If the judges votes were counted,the judges points would be 2 to emma and 1 to louisa as their was only two in the danceoff not four couples.Louisa could have still overturned the result if she had the more public votes.

I think they should release the figures at the end of the series,on big brother they do after each eviction.But that is different because the remaining contestants are locked away so they will not find out the results till after they have left the show.

They we're leaked by someone [I think they worked for BT] to the sunday people,they weren't released like the bbc are being asked.They actually showed the actual voting figures of each act.The figures were very quite surprising as the hot favourite Shayne Ward was actually shown to have been close to having to do the sing off on 2 occasions , because fans were becoming complacent that he was an dead cert for the final.From then on Louis walsh and shayne were practically begging[successfully] every saturday to the public for votes.If these figures hadnt been released there could have been an entirely different result at the end of the series.thats why figures of these types of shows arent released while the show is still running