OMG! Basically Len decided it? I thought the shambles had ended when SCD6 ended. Obviously I was wrong.

Because the judges weren't prone to abusing their power.

OK! This is the last time and then I officially give up!

The whole point of SCD is that half the points come from the judges, half from the studio audience/voting public. With me so far?

One of the strengths of the show is that the audience at home have the power to totally reverse a leader board so that the person at the bottom can win because the audience vote in the event of a tie carries more weight.

This can't happen if there is a 4 - way tie for the lead after the judges votes. Only the 4 who are tied can win, and for many people, this is unfair, the audience at home/in the studio can't choose the winner, they can only choose their winner from amongst the 4 the judges have chosen.

I really don't think it would have been an issue if the semi final hadn't have happened the way it did. But everyone's concentrating on scores at the moment and it would be obvious if the person on 1 or 2 points with the judges had scored maximum points with the audience and so the producers are very sensitive to this.


And surely the producers now realise that the viewing audience at home have no respect for the judges or their scores any more. They've abused their power and left us at home feeling very cynical.

It's exactly the same scenario as the semifinal, FG. The problem isn't about the top 4, it's the bottom 2 who can't win. Let's say the top 4 are Jill, Lisa, Kelly and Rachel, with Alesha 5th and Tom 6th. Alesha gets the most audience votes in scenario 1, and Tom in scenario 2. So...

Scenario 1

Jill 6 + 4 = 10
Rachel 6 + 3 = 9
Kelly 6 + 2 = 8
Lisa 6 + 1 = 7
Alesha 2 + 6 = 8
Tom 1 + 5 = 6

Alesha will always be beaten by at least 2 couples. Tom will always be bottom. They'd have to be removed from the voting as any votes cast for them will be pointless. You can't have a competition then exclude 2 people from it just because of a tie.

Scenario 2

Jill 6 + 4 = 10
Rachel 6 + 3 = 9
Kelly 6 + 2 = 8
Lisa 6 + 1 = 7
Alesha 2 + 5 = 7
Tom 1 + 6 = 7

Alesha and Tom will always be bottom, so again any votes cast for them would be pointless.

This problem should have been forseen given the judges only come armed with 2 paddles - 9 and 10 - for the xmas special. With mark inflation it is always more likely that more 10s than 9s will be given out, so a tie with more than 2 people on 40 should have been envisaged.

The best way forward would have been to rank them 6,6,6,6,5,4 and not 6,6,6,6,2,1. Or as has been suggested, the judges could have commented and not scored. After all it's just lighthearted festive fun, not the world championships!

This is all getting silly now.

I think the judges vote should be axed in a xmas special as they will all get near 40 anyway.

No, but you have to admit that it takes a rather unique set of circumstances to produce a 4-way tie from 6 couples.

yep all they needed to do was scrap the judges vote.
It really annoys me that the judges cant even give up there power for an x mas special
Its only meant to be a bit of light hearted fun i know but i just think the judges are ruining the whole show now

and the GBP aren't by voting for people like JS

Len, Arlene and Bruno were only given a 10 paddle. Luckily Craig also brought a 9 paddle with him.

Yep, OK.


Er so point 1 is not true then is it? If the audience carries more weight, then it's not 50-50.

I'm the last person to be supporting the sometimes bizarre voting of the judges, but I genuinely don't see what the problem is with having a 50-50 split. If the lowest placed couple can't win, so what? Were we not told that it was supposed to be, ahem, a dancing competition, not a popularity contest....

It really seems like the judges will have no scores at all next year and it'll solely be down to the public vote...

no they arent. Who cares if they we want to keep him in, he was never going to win the whole show. If anything it was because of the judges vote that people kept him in!

That's what started the whole mess.

G

Exactly my point. The audience vote has just got too reactionary.

G

But if the lowest marked person is 39 then why shouldnt they win?
For example in the final Lisa got 80 and Rachel got 79, Personally i think rachel danced better but if the judges that there say Lisa would have won.
They judges arent always right when it comes to the best dancing.

I thought this was going to say who won but thankfull it doesnt although I already knew.

I wonder how they will show this on the TV then, will they film just the judges given 're-considered' scores !!! or show us the whole story.

Seriously, they are so incredibly daft!

Just score the four tied at the top with three points, and the ones at the bottom two with two and one point respectively. Then probem solved.

I mean, there's no dance-off. But they are worried that those at the bottom will NEVER get voted to win because their points are too far apart from the top scorers.

How difficult is this? The same with the semi finals. If they've scored Lisa and Rachel both with two points, and Tom with one, then there will be no problems with audience picking who they want out of the dance off and yet it's still fair to the top scorers because they are one point ahead of the lowest scoring couple.

I think you'll find that Arlene and Craig especially telling us who we could like and who we could vote for caused all the problems.

If they kept their mouths shut and just scored and commented on Saturday night and didn't involve themselves in the media, then we wouldn't be where we are now!

The BBC have just given us the full story there, they only miss out the names.

G

The Christmas special is meant to be a feelgood show to round off the season. The judges' scores mean nothing to this particular show (and if four couples did get 40/40, surely this is fairly strong evidence for that) and should count for nothing. The judges should comment but not mark. If they actually commented properly, this would probably hold more sway than a few hundred meaningless tens but I'm not holding my breath.

Actually if Len ranked the top four couples, then the audience vote would still decide the winner wouldn't it? It look as if this is their contingency plan for future series if there is a tie in the future.

It does seem as if the dancer with the highest studio audience vote would have won this time, which is OK really. The only problem I have is Len deciding as he is prone to bias, although he does know more about ballroom/latin than the others (not that that is saying much really!), but I suppose if someone has to, he is the logical choice.

OK i get it now...i did in the semi final as well but never mind......

So why not just tell the audience last night to vote for the dance they enjoyed the most......rather than who they want to win and then this situation would never arise...

It would be sort of "tough" if your fave dance didn't win but you would have no complaint as that wasn't what you were told you were voting for (the win i mean)......

There has got to be a better way than Len re-ranking the couples

Why not get rid of the judges scores altogether as i bet they just gave out 10's/40's here there and everywhere...

Were we not also told to vote for our favourites and not ever actually told to vote for the best dancer? That's the dichotomy of SCD, is it a dance competition, is it a popularity contest, is it a mixture of the two?

Isn't the Christmas special just a bit of fun?

They've done no different than in previous years.

Their appearances are all part of promoting the show.

G

It wasn't just Len's decision: the judges came to a decision between them and Len announced it. (I was there Len said it was a joint decision.)