WE THE undersigned will continue to vote for the worst celebrity contestant, even if it means they win the dancing competition, until the BBC comply with our demands:

1. The Sunday night programme is scrapped and the results show is returned to its rightful place of Saturday night live.

2. The voting lines are open only between the two programmes.

3. The system is changed to focus on dancing performance. This will entail voting to get rid of a particular couple, rather than to retain; and no more exhortations to “vote for your favourite.”

Failure to comply with our demands will result in falling viewing figures, hence falling voting, hence falling money to charity. Thus one of the best shows on TV will have been transformed into a farcical travesty and no longer commissioned.

To anyone at the BBC who does not think this is serious: Take a look at your own programme – it’s happening – incredible as you may think it but people are prepared to vote for this person. We're doing it already!!!

I'll go along with that!!

WHY WHY WHY do the BEEB have to change things when it's not needed?!?! If it ain't broke then don't try to fix it


Put the results back on Saturday night where they should be. The British public want's it and as we pay for the channel we should get it

I can't see how this petition can possibly fail..... I imagine the beeb are proper bricking it now.

I tried to post it on the BBC site as well but I kept getting a message saying my OP contained a word which was not acceptable. In all seriousness I changed everything I could think of that might cause offence, short of changing what I was actually trying to say, but nothing I changed seemed to come up with an acceptable OP. I wonder what word is deemed automatically unacceptable?

Maybe someone else would care to give it a go!!??

I think the offensive word may be Petition. Don't think the BBC likes them

Signing!

Not sure about what word the Beeb doesn't like. Maybe it is petition but maybe it's a hidden word. One where a word is in a word or the end of one word and the start of another makes a third!

Well with regard to point 3, I may be downright weird for thinking this but I've always thought of "vote for your favourites" as meaning "vote for your favourite dancers" rather than personalities. Call me odd.

Well this is just the biggest load of monkey nuts I've read in a while. When defining the phrase 'cutting off your nose to spite your face' all you'd need to do is point at this idea.

Sorry but this is just ridiculous.

The Sunday night show is nothing more than a mild irritation to be honest. And at least it now allows many people to go out on a Saturday evening after the main show has ended.

If the phone lines were only open for such a brief period of time it would mean less money raised for CiN overall and likely make it far more difficult for the poor sods calling on a landline to ever register a vote. I don't have a problem with my mobile but of course I don't - it costs more!

What a horrible idea - vote for the worst. Load of nonsense. The idea is (and always has been) the judges vote on the dancing talent and the public vote for whatever reason they damn well like. Don't always agree with it but that's their prerogative. And what makes you think if you switch it round and have an 'anti' vote instead, people will actually vote on the dancing? With that system, Kelly and Brendan would have left weeks ago!

The BBC don't give a flying hoohah who wins so continuing voting for the worst dancer just to spite them is incredible childish and even more pointless. With viewers increasing to 9.3 million last week it doesn't seem Kate's continued participation is hurting the show much viewer wise...

Oh for the love of god ......

Talk about "I'll scweam and scweam and scweam until I'm sick ......."

The lines are open all week to vote for your favourite to do one specific thing - to get people to vote. A lot.

It's for CIN. It's not a dance competition. It's an entertainment show designed to raised as much money for CIN as possible that has a dance competition element, ie, the judges. That is all.

Why are people, after 5 years, still finding that so very hard to understand.

It's all about the money.

Maybe the word the BBC site objected to was "BBC" -- i.e. how DARE you write anything that actually relates to them and their shows ?? !!!!

Have you tried reposting it by "splitting" up a few of the words -- eg:

"pet itch ion" .... "Bee Bee Cee" ....?


I personally can see your point -- I actually hate the fact that Kate Gandylegs Gerraway is still in the comp .... but can see why people are annoyed with the new format.

Let's tell the Beeb that we are gonna vote for Kate to win until they move the results show back to Saturday !!!!!

I'm loving your idea TangoLover!

Just take time for a dose of reality here (sit down, you will not like it).

The Sunday results programme has been a success ratings-wise, the overnights (that is, not including timeshifts, VCR recordings etc) for the last Sunday programme were:

6.50pm Strictly Come Dancing - 8.51m (35.0% audience share) - Peak 9.87m (at 19:25)

Looking back on the Ratings Thread in TV Programmes, the audience has been increasing each week (i.e. more people are watching week on week). It is getting fantastic figures for a Sunday, in a slot that is rather difficult to fill effectively.

There are no more than maybe a couple of hundred regular posters in this forum, only a small number have posted in support of this thread.

Is is conceivable that any threats or actual action by even the massed SCD forum membership will have any real impact or is likely to get the BBC to drop an obvious ratings winner?

What a complete load of nonsense! I'm sorry, TangoLover, but voting for Kate just to try and annoy the BBC is going to result in the annoyance of a lot of Strictly fans who want the closing stages of the competition to be about the best dancing. It is such an anticlimax when the final isn't competitive. In any case, the scheduling is usually decided weeks in advance so I doubt they'd change it this series. I agree that having to wait until Sunday does spoil the excitement, but I also agree with the point about freedom to go out on Saturday night.

I also agree with everything claire says... Someone talking sense at last!

Possibly.

And when defining the word “irony” one could use this from an online dictionary:

Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done, what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others understand.

Der Chef says

I believe rating for the beeb are massively up on sunday nights and avoids an embarrassing ratings war with X-factor on a saturday night so you have no chance

Ohhhh Yeah

Thanks Tangolover. You're spot on.

However I fear currently the BEEB is unlikely to change while the dosh is rolling in. Only a serious drop in voting numbers is likely to make them think again. I don't like the way this programme has suddenly been highjacked by the "It's only an entertainment programme" faction. We, who still consider it a dancing competition, are always being accused of being unfair in our voicing our opinions. Even Claudia hammers on about this "entertainment show" all the time.
Anyone got any positive ideas what needs to happen to get the BEEB to change?

The last thing the BEEB want to do is to admit that they've made a mistake. Afterall, the BEEB is not a private company, they don't even have to worry about losing money nor do they have to do anything right for the business. They have all the income from the TV license and so why should they care? The only concern for them is to keep their job and pretending that they didn't make a mistake is one way of securing it (for them, for the time being at least).

It's a sad reality in the UK (probably why not many other countries have the license fee though)

I'm sorry, but the words "it's just an entertainment programme!!" spring to mind.

Keep on voting for the worst if you like. Just ignore all of the hard work and dedication that all of the others are putting in, run the risk or completely ruining your own final and completely ignore the fact that you are 'campaining' for fairness, by doing something completely unfair to the majority of people on the programme.

But hey, if that's really what you want to do - go for it. You might be wasting your time though, as the Beeb have been enjoying increased ratings with the new format and are raising tons of money for charity with their current voting format.

Some problems though...the longer Kate stays in, the more controversy there will be therefore meaning more press interest and more ratings for the BBC. Also if we vote to evict, just look at the negative polls, Kelly etc would be out early as would many of the other previous good dancers. It just wouldn't work.

But the "dancers" are the people, surely. There's no implication in "vote for your favourite dancers" that they have to be the best dancers.

Agree most of that.

I wouldn't stress the viewing figures - they are doing too well to change their minds on that - yet . The second point in that paragraph is the stronger one - its becoming a farce. Its not a viewing figure problem yet but you logically can't sustain a show where who goes has no relationship to who performs best. If anyone can go and who wins isn't related to ability or effort its not sensible for the celebrities to try hard or the pros to bother. Why train if you just don't fit the stereotype the public are voting for or people lfar worse suck up all the votes? Why should the judges turn up if its only to be made to look like fools and then forced to vote out the people they have just told us were good ? Its ultimately unsatifactory for the audience too as its pretty pointless supporting anyone when everyone could go at random. They can get by so long by claiming that the people who got to the final are worthy and telling people that winning is meaningful but even that can't be sustained forever. As it becomes obvious that the competition either went early and/or he best people may not even have made the final, it should become obvious that whatever you are voting for its not the winner of a dancing competition.

Voting for the worst is the opposite of what the OP proposed - voting out the worst.

There's no reason to suspect it wouldn't usually work logically as most people could recognise the worst dancer and the people supporting the dire dancers would have to spread their votes over everyone else. It might dispose of the dire. Later on it would reproduce the current problem where the best are not always popular enough to survive and would be voted out by the fans of the less good. It solves the Kate problem but not the later ones. In some cases where silly or racial arguments take a hold it might not even work early on.

Where it fails is on the money question because unless people are actually personally awful more people will vote for what they like than to get someone out.

I don't think it solves the Kate problem; it would just mean that the least popular couples would go. Least popular doesn't = worst dancers, and it's not only later on that that would matter. If DS polls are any guide, Kelly and Brendan would already be gone, for example.

It's true that DS polls also say Kate would go, but it doesn't generalise. Other poor dancers aren't in the same danger.

It will never be a dance contest unless the public vote is eliminated.

Anything could happen but if you say vote for the person you most want to go and suggest that dancing is the criteria a lot of people should focus on the worst dancer? If they voted for who they didn't like the votes would spread around unless there was someone who really attracted votes? The people who are voting on quality or for other dancers would focus disproportionately on Kate I would imagine and the Kate support vote would have to vote for everyone else or agree (how?) who to vote out instead?

It would fall apart if a lot of people decided to vote Emma or Kelly out because they were too good or too successful or too pretty and it wouldn't work later on as fans cf popular contestants would have fewer other people to pick, but it might get rid of the people who were clearly worst?

The main reality shows often seem to get people wanting the opposite voting system (save vs evict) than the one they have. There are many posts saying Big Brother should have positive (to save) votes; last year, people were begging for "I'm a Celebrity" to have negative votes so they could get rid of someone (I forget who it was); and now negative votes are being proposed for SCD.

I have a feeling the public will often manage to get the "wrong" result no matter which system is used.

This year, negative voting probably would get rid of Kate, but I think it would also take out Kelly and perhaps would have eliminated Gabby as well. And then it's not clear what would happen. Would the worst dancers go, or something else?

I also think negative voting tends to create ill feeling between different groups of supporters and tactical / blacklash / revenge votes, and it can be unpleasant for the contestants. Suppose you dance well and still get voted out. The public must really dislike you, it will seem.

The show could start saying more consistently that it's about dancing, rather than having the judges say that while Tess's pleas for votes say something else, but that could be done without changing the voting system.

I wonder, though, how that would feel. Someone dances poorly, they're slated by the judges, and then Tess says "if you thought their dance was the best ..."?

At least as it is now the poorer dancers can feel they might be kept in, to give them a chance, or because they've worked hard or improved. If that were taken away, I wonder how motivated they'd be.

And also, would it be as interesting a show if any of these things worked and the weaker ones went week after week. Journeys would be cut short, and journeys, even though they're a kind of cliché, are part of what draws viewers to the show. There'd probably be more resentment about previous dance training, as an unfair advantage. I don't think it's clear where we'd end up.

It seems to me this year's transfer of power away from the voters to the judges has worked against the good dancers...because the anti-judge vote has become stronger. Whether or not this was the actual intention I don't know....ostensibly not but I'm cynical.

For reasons others have covered, I think there would be as many problems with so-called 'negative' voting as with the current 'vote for your fave'.

If they're not going to go back - and the ratings suggest there's no reason to - and if we want the best dancers to survive, it seems to me that the only way is to give the judges sufficiently more power so that the voters can't screw it up whilst still allowing the voters some say. Then of course we're in to issues of whether or not we trust the judges.

My view is that if they're going to have a results show it should be live whatever day it's on. One possible format: phone lines open only from the end of the Saturday show (when all the judges scores are known) to some point during the results show BUT voting is restricted to a 'relegation zone' i.e. the bottom three or couples in the bottom half of the leader board. In that way good performance = immunity and bad performance is penalised (by required attendance at the results show) even if the couple survives the vote.

Two major problems, however: voting revenue will probably be hit and it doesn't work if you don't believe the judges are impartial.