OK, I wrote the Britain’s Got Talent final post yesterday, and there’ve been some interesting comments on that thread that I’d like to highlight and respond to.

First, I don’t think there’s anything the Britain’s Got Talent producers can do to fix the vote at the phone-in stage. The most they can do is influence the voting public through the video links for each contestant.

Why would they do that? Well, dear reader – let’s assume teenage girls are a key demographic of shows like BGT and X Factor. Let’s also assume that those teenage girls are very trigger-happy with their phones and text votes. Now, let’s take a wild, wild leap of fantasy and imagine that the producers of the show make money from phone votes. Lots of money. No, obscene amounts of money.

So, isn’t it even remotely possible that the production will stir up the sad sad stories of those working class lads and their being bullied and their wanting to help their mummies to entice that gullible, txt-happy group of girls to vote in their millions?

Switching to X Factor for a second, how else do you explain the horrors that were Ray Quinn and Leon Jackson? Tweenie text votes.

If it was purely a talent competition, we’d have got to know a little more about the contestants likes and dislikes, their passions, how they got into singing/dancing/teaching their dog complicated routines. We don’t need to know or care about their social situations. In fact, telling the audience about their social situations is exploiting the voters and exploiting the performers.

Switch over to BBC One’s I’d Do Anything and you’d witness a much more dignified contest. Anyway, here’s a few other points…

• One commenter confusingly claims that the voting wasn’t fixed, but goes on to say that they are shocked Simon ‘allowed’ a non-singer to win. If there’s no element of fixing in the competition, surely Simon couldn’t allow anything?
• Signature were not better than George Sampson. Their act was good, but a bit of a one-trip pony. A commenter on the previous post compared them to a couple of guys dancing after a boozy night out. I totally agree.
• Another commenter claimed that George could look forward to a bright future in the limelight. Get real. How many dancers do you see in recurring television shows? Those shows just don’t exist.
• My feeling is that while the production can’t completely control the final outcome, they can engineer it through VT and publicity to get several desirable candidates through to the final. From that point onward, it’s up to the audience.

A final point that other critics have highlighted is that the final act on each night was the ‘favourite’ act, and that the voting lines were opened while they were fresh in people’s minds and even while the judges were still commenting on their performance.

Even Simon Cowell has commented on the editorial format of the show, and he’s remarked a couple of times about trying to judge based on talent and not on stories.

Bottom line? I really hope ITV start to revise the format of their talent shows. The tabloid tactics they employ are an insult to the intelligence of the nation they’re supposed to be representing. Frankly, I used to love shows like these, but watching them lately has made me feel a bit dirty.