reality tv; the public’s revenge

Now come on, why would you want to vote for a sorry old bloke who can’t sing and looks like a refugee from a hippy colony in a high-profile talent competition? Because I sense the public have had enough of the squabbling (amongst the judges!) and being milked by the likes of Simon Cowell and his blessed record/music business. And they are voting for Wagner at the expense of far better singers in the hope, I believe, that they can secure a very unlikely (and in Cowell’s case presumably highly unwelcome ) winner of the X Factor.  Do you think Simon and Syco Music will fancy their chances of a Xmas No1 next year with this Brazilian sherbert?

let’s dance

As Duncan Thicket might say, have you nerticed how many programmes there are on prime-time TV about dancing? The schedules have gone absolutely dance crazy. The daddy of them all, Strictly Come Dancing, has spawned many bastard children; ITV’s Dancing on Ice,  So You Think You Can Dance also from the BBC (featuring as a judge the heavily re-treaded Arlene Philipps), Sky’s Got to Dance fronted by a leotarded Davina McCall and Channel 4’s Only When I Dance. Channel 5 must feel like they’re missing out on a huge wave of popular culture and as we speak are probably holding commissioning meetings through the night to try and decide what their ‘innovative and different’ dance formula will be.

and the winner is….

Well what a night for winners eh? The biggest had to be ITV over the BBC. By all accounts more 10m people voted for  the X Factor finalists compared with 0.5m for the Sports Personality of the Year. The audience figures  must have been similarly  skewed too I suspect. Why on earth do the BBC put their flagship programmes up against the behemoth that is X Factor? It strikes me as bonkers. Wouldn’t it have been better to schedule SPOTY to next Sunday evening when they would have presumably dominated the weekend viewing with the final of the Beeb’s Strictly Come Dancing capturing the Saturday night audience. But what do I know?