Strictly Come Dancing vote 'farce' - BBC will not refund viewers

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The BBC was last night criticised for failing to foresee the voting confusion that baffled the show's millions of fans and threatens to taint next week's final.

Philip Davies MP, a Tory member of the culture committee, said that the corporation should have had measures in place to prevent the "ludicrous" situation of viewers paying to cast meaningless votes.

Producers went ahead with the public vote even though Holby City actor Tom Chambers received such low marks from the judges that he could not have been saved from the dance-off. When programme bosses eventually realised the error they decided that all three contestants – Chambers, model Lisa Snowdon and singer Rachel Stevens – should go through to the final next week. Yesterday the BBC refused to reimburse viewers, saying that all votes would be rolled over.

"It's going back to the bad old days when people were being swindled", Mr Davies said, calling for viewers to be refunded. "It looks like the BBC have learned nothing from all the previous voting scandals.

"They should have seen what the situation was and stopped people from voting in the first place."

Hundreds of people have complained to the BBC about Saturday's show, which ended ten minutes early with no explanation about why the eviction was cancelled.

The official Strictly Come Dancing message board has been deluged with angry posts from fans, many threatening to boycott the final.

Several commenters accused the show's judges, who previously roused the public's ire over their treatment of John Sargeant, of deliberately trying to make the public vote an irrelevance by awarding top marks to Snowdon and Stevens.

"Absolutely disgusting, the BBC deceived all the voters, you should be ashamed of yourselves," wrote one. "Assuring us that they go through to next week is a farce, we voted on this week's dances."

Another commenter wrote: "Tonight's show was outrageous. We voted for Lisa and clearly Tom should have gone – our votes have been obtained under false pretences and the whole series has been spoilt by your unprecedented decision to freeze the voting. We will not be watching again."

The BBC said in a statement that the confusion came about because of the "unprecedented outcome of the judges' vote".

"The vote opened just before the programme went off air, we took the decision that all the votes cast tonight should stand and be carried through to next week's final so the audience has had the usual chance to vote on the performances of all our semi-finalists," the BBC said.

There were originally meant to be three couples in the final, but veteran broadcaster Sergeant's decision to quit the show last month threw the elimination process out of kilter.

The BBC was fined and forced to apologise last year for a series of phone-in decaption scandals affecting shows including Blue Peter, Children in Need, Comic Relief, and Sport Relief.


Source:telegraph