No, no - isn't it obvious? They met when they were both on the supermodel circuit, and Kelly is returning to Fairview (I think that's the name of their town) to score modeling gigs, in direct competition with Gabby. And...catfight ensues! Ratings soar!

To add more fuel to the "built-in fanbase" fire, Boston drew the largest ratings for the show with the 18-49 year olds. Boston loves its NKOTB sons! And then Philadelphia came in second... make of it what you will, Johnophiles!
Ratings for DWTS


On the incredibly short supermodel circuit! The same circuit that Lucy from "Dallas" worked -- hehe.

I think it is reasonable to think he is upset, or he wouldn't be on LKL talking about how the show needs tweaking and all that. And why would he only be upset over one or the other (fan voting vs. judges' voting)? I think he could be upset over both. He could be upset over the judges' vote in principle, even though ultimately it meant nothing, and he could be upset over the fan vote because it's what kept him from winning. Not to mention his crack about having a much smaller fan base...why mention it if he didn't care? He could have just accepted defeat graciously and let Kelly have her moment without adding fuel to the conspiracy fire.

And as djork said, for you to assume he is upset about being "used by ABC as [a tool] to promote their own agenda" assumes there was an agenda in the first place. I'll believe it when I see it.

Assuming the bottom two teams in the second week also had the two lowest fan votes, K/A needed to be 2nd in fan votes to be above them. I don't remember the judges' vote from the second week, so I can't be more accurate, but if in the second week T/L was 4th with the judges and last with the fans, and E/E was 5th with the judges and 5th with the fans, that would give both teams 7 points total, with E/E staying in because of the fan vote tiebreaker. K/A received a total of 2 points from the judges, which means they would have needed 5 from the fans to avoid the bottom two (and inevitable elimination).

and

I may be alone on this, but I don't see how his offering an off-the-cuff suggestion on how to improve the show (which BTW was similar to what many viewers were saying long before the finale) is evidence of being "upset" over the voting. He flatly stated, without qualification, that he thought the competition was absolutely fair. (I may disagree with him on that point *eg* but I hate to see someone repeatedly taken to task for something he didn't say.)

Perhaps because it was a self-deprecating joke? It's obvious that he didn't have as many fans voting for him as Kelly. If he had, he would have won. That's the very essence of the fan voting process. Perhaps she had more "built in" fans, perhaps she didn't and she earned the most fans with her dancing. It's irrelevant as a basis for JOH's comment because either way, she obviously had more than the 13 votes his nieces and nephews could give him. :)


Yes, he could be upset over both. But I said "it seems much more likely to me that ..." And that's because I would expect a smart guy like JOH to have figured out what others here had figured out -- that the audience outcome was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps I'm projecting my own attitudes too much, because I would have been upset only by the judges' voting. The fan voting would have been out of my control and was always going to be a popularity contest. That was a given. Nothing to be upset over when it happens. OTOH, it would have been reasonable IMO to expect the judges to be neutral (and consistent), and to be a bit miffed when *apparently* (depending on your POV), they weren't.
Again, I am not assuming that he was or wasn't upset by it. I was merely stating my opinion, based on how I would have felt. And of course, feelings are not always logical. Just because there is no proof doesn't make the feelings/suspicions any less valid. If the suspicion is there, anger may well follow, whether or not the suspicion is accurate.

OTOH, it would have been reasonable IMO to expect the judges to be neutral (and consistent), and to be a bit miffed when *apparently* (depending on your POV), they weren't.[QUOTE]

Bingo Dominar! Audience vote didn't suprise me, but I expected better from the judges.

We know this because we know the judges' scores as well as the tiebreakers and because we know that Kelly was never even in the bottom 2, so she had to have placed first or second with the viewers every single week if you do the math.

I don't think anyone disputes she won the audience vote in the finale and I think we all know why that had to be the case.

In the semis, based on the placements given by the judges, she must've won the audience vote or Joey would've been in the finals.

In the initial episode, she was no worse than second in the audience vote (I stand corrected on my previous assertion she was first, most likely she was, but there are a couple of scenarios where she might've been voted second). We know this because she escaped the bottom two completely even though she had the lowest scores from the judges. Once again, knowing who left and who was second last, tells you what the minimum score Kelly had to have gotten to stay out of the bottom and she must've been top two from the very start.

Looking at the other weeks and adding the scores and it becomes clear that she was first or second every single time, most likely first since the only other 'star' who could've beaten her some of those weeks was Joey and he ended up missing the finals which wouldn't have happened if he was the audience favorite.

Starting on about page 75 of this thread, you will see multiple posters discussing this in detail. One even said he tried to place an online bet on her after the first week or so as you can do with other reality shows, but none of them were taking bets. The reason they weren't taking bets was because the bookmakers had done the math and knew that the winner could be reliably predicted even though the voting hadn't even taken place yet. They don't take sucker bets.

Therefore, the network's storyline for Kelly, that she was the feisty underdog who came from behind to take the grand prize was blatantly false, she was the frontrunner from the very start and ABC had to have known it. That makes all of their promotion of John as the favorite and Kelly as the longshot who came from way behind to win a big bunch of hooey and hype. It was never true that he was destined to win, Kelly had it pretty well locked up from the first vote, and TPTB and the network knew it even if Kelly and/or John didn't realize at first.

Please keep in mind that this is a discussion of a celebrity dancing show, not a murder trial. Relax.

Except that ABC didn't control how viewers voted. They may have seen a pattern, but they didn't create it, and they couldn't guarantee it. On any given week, the tide might have turned and people who had supported an ousted dancer might have transferred their support to John. When it got down to only two dancers, the viewers might have gone for John. It wasn't something that ABC had control over, therefore it wasn't hooey. John was the judges favorite, overall. Kelly happened to be audience favorite as it turned out, but at any point she could have been supplanted by another dancer.

It doesn't matter whether ABC set it up this way, though it certainly is possible that they did, my point is that TPTB knew from at least the first episode, and possibly from preshow surveys, that Kelly was the most popular contestant with the viewers.

While they couldn't guarantee that Kelly's lead would hold, it is statistically quite possible to predict the trends in any popular vote, political pollsters do it all the time based on much less info that the network would've had and the range of error is pretty small. Because of the way the scoring was set up, that meant that it was almost impossible from the very start that Kelly WOULDN'T win the whole thing and they knew it.

This is especially true because Kelly's dancing in the first couple of episodes was pretty bad, I doubt any viewers were ranking her in the top two on her performance, but yet we know she was top of the heap, which means people voted for her for reasons other than the quality of her performance. That made it even less likely that significant numbers of voters would switch in subsequent episodes because a lot of them weren't voting for a performance but for Kelly, no matter what. If anything, both because her dancing did improve and because she was getting ongoing hype as the underdog, she likely picked up even more voters and an even bigger lead in subsequent weeks.

Therefore, all of ABC's publicity, including the TV commercials and interviews that touted Kelly as the longshot and John as the favorite were completely false and ABC knew that but persisted in keeping the storyline going, knowing full well that, barring a miracle, John wasn't going to win and Kelly was. I think it's an interesting example of how TV networks can spin public opinion despite readily available facts and how the network PR machine set up storylines for each participant which had nothing to do with the truth.

Just wanted to say that I enjoyed watching the show and especially the storylines (fabricated or not).

I liked the underdog story. Kelly sucked in the beginning and she improved and it was nice to watch thoughout the series. I liked John's dancing too (though, the face making while dancing got a bit too much for me). I honestly could care less that the storylines were set-up. I've come to expect that from anything that comes out of the tv. What mattered to me was the entertainment value.

ETA: I enjoy this thread and it's fun to read everyone's differening povs - even though it's just a "dancing show".

Trying to find a life-and-death-qualified joke here, but I have the feeling I'd better pass. Thanks for keeping an eye on things.

Kelly was the last celebrity signed on to the show, so TPTB couldn't have had their nefarious scheme in place for long. Evander was second to last and he was added at the last minute to cover for a celeb that had dropped out. I think what happened was ABC was running out of time and went to the daytime division as a last resort. I think I read somewhere that Evander had one less week than the others, so if Kelly was the last one (and this information comes from Kelly herself), then she had even less time than Evander.

And on the sauce for the goose front, a very good case could be made that the judges were trying to rig the competition in John's favor as well.

[OliverStone]The judges were afraid of losing their favorite, John, just like they did with Rachel and scored John well above everyone else and made sure that he beat Joey in the semi-finals. By what had happened the weeks before, it was a pretty good bet that Joey and Kelly were at the top of the viewer voting. Joey's fans had had a wake-up call the week before when he landed in the bottom 2, but had bounced them back up the next week, when John landed in the bottom 2. The judges probably knew there wasn't anything they could do about Kelly, she was a juggernaut at that point and was actually favored by the judges over Joey in the past few dances.

It was very, very likely that on the night of the semi-finals, if Joey had gotten 2 more points and even tied with Kelly; John would have been the one going home. Joey's Paso Doble was excellent - far superior to John's, but yet he didn't get three 9's as John did. Joey also got raked over the coals for the foxtrot and scored way below what he deserved. If Joey had tied with Kelly in the judges scoring, they would have both received an ordinal of 2, and Joey had been anything but last in the viewer voting that night, John would have been knocked out.

So, what did the judges do? They made sure that John was first in the voting and Joey was last, thereby knocking Joey out of the competition and John sails on into the finals. John is shown several times saying "If I don't make the finals I'll be very disappointed" and "I have to win this". Hmmm... more signs of the conspiracy? Did John know what the judges were up to? John was the only one who kept being told that they were the "couple to beat". More signs? [/Oliver Stone]

I think it goes to show that a conspiracy can be made out of anything.

Except, of course, as we all know, the judges scores were meaningless in determining the ultimate winner. On other shows where audience voting is used, like American Idol, it seems like the audience is more likely to vote for performers the judges criticize, not the ones they like. If anything, the fact that the judges seemed to prefer John's dancing to Kelly's for most of the show gives credence to the theory that the network was trying to set up a storyline that John was the overwhelming favorite, while Kelly had no chance of winning (even though the weekly results prove exactly the opposite). At least it does if you think Kelly was a better dancer than John (which I personally don't).


I presume this is your opinion since I sure don't agree and plenty of other posters here didn't either. Anyway, all of the theorizing about how Joey was scored by the judges in the semis supports a 'conspiracy theory', doesn't it? Did you think Kelly's paso doble was as good as Joey's? The judges gave her the same score even though I thought she was the weakest of the 3. As was discussed at the time, the judges had no control over whether the winner in the audience vote was going to the finals, it was mathematically impossible for them to eliminate Kelly. They could only influence who her competition would be. It is not impossible that they did indeed score the competitors in such a way as to put John into the finals which means they also had to rig Kelly's scores. On that night, John not only needed to win, Kelly had to be second and Joey third or Joey would've made the finals. John was already getting a lot of PR for the show, he was a great interview, he was being touted by the network as the man to beat; even though they knew he wouldn't win. I agree, it is possible that the judges aligned their voting in order to keep John until the finale, but not so much because they wanted John to win (they knew he couldn't), but because it made for a better storyline in the final episode.


I don't think this was a nefarious scheme at all and I don't think it mattered much if it was Kelly or some other soap star; it could well be that their pre-show research (including the results of all of the UK and Aussie versions of the show) indicated that a network soap star was going to be the recipient of a huge bloc of votes every single week, enough to nullify any voting based on the actual dancing. Enough to put her in the top two every single week, no matter how she did in comparison to the others. In other words, JOH was telling the truth when he said Kelly had a built-in fanbase, it was not sour grapes.

I don't think the show was deliberately 'rigged' in the sense that someone did something unethical or illegal, but I do think the network and the producers knew, probably prior to the start, but certainly from the first elimination, that Kelly was going to win, no matter what happened. I enjoyed watching the dancing and the interactions between the stars and the pros very much, I will watch it again; I just won't pretend it's really a contest since it obviously isn't unless the scoring system is overhauled.

No.

I think you might have missed the point of my post - that a conspiracy can be made out of anything. I wasn't serious, hence the Oliver Stone tags.

And on the ship front (GH spoiler enclosed) Word is that Kelly's character is going to have a "double" who is a ballroom dancer. No word on if Alec is showing up, but Justin Melvy, who was a celebrity on the Aussie DWTS is part of the storyline. Hmmm, I wonder who is coaching Kelly's dancing?

Well said, FormerOlympian.

I enjoyed DWTS but I really wasn't rooting for any particular celebrity so I don't find myself getting caught up in the drama it has become over the voting.

pennypen I don't think barkley was seriously trying to pose a counter-conspiracy conspiracy, I think she was just making a point that anyone so-inclined can make a well-thought out conspiracy story, hence the [/OLIVER STONE] tags. It's very easy to take facts and weave a plausible story thru it by making a series of assumptions. And it's also quite as easy to punch holes through that story when others challenge the assumptions that hold the story together. In the end her assumptions are no more credible than anyone else's, because none of us really know the factual details of the whole thing.

As fun as it is sometimes to snark and make up conspiracy stories and debunk them, as Miss Alli said this is not a murder trial.

barkley you just made my day. GH producers need to open their eyes and see how gorgeous Alec is! No need to import a co-star. Besides, how much acting is necessary when he can tell the story with his body. Their characters will likely be passionately in love anyway, so we all know an acting background is not necessary in THIS plot point, heh!! I hope they pull Alec in!!!

Her one twuw luv of course! Hah, maybe they just couldn't stay away from each other. It's 'work' after all :)

Excuse me a minute while I put on my t-shirt bearing peppypen's name in nice big block letters. I've got to pay tribute somehow.

Because those posts of hers, IMO, are thoughtful and provocative and most of all place the show into a broader context. They provide the opportunity to examine DWtS from all angles and stimulate a lot of compelling discussion. I very much appreciate reading all the different points of view they have elicited and the extension in energy and life they have given to this wonderful thread -- and suddenly a mere t-shirt in tribute/thanks doesn't seem near enough.

Ya'll know it's just an excuse to continue their "professional" relationship going. :)

Peppypen, I enjoy reading your comments too - even if I don't agree with some of them.

Of course it's possible to imagine a conspiracy almost anywhere, however, one doesn't need to make a series of assumptions to know that Kelly was the audience choice from the very start of the show and that never changed from week to week. It can be proven that this is true and not some leap of faith. Since that is the case, and since this show was imported from overseas where the scoring system was identical and where the result was the same in every case, with a network star winning, I just don't see how it is possible that TPTB didn't know from the outset that Kelly was the strong favorite to win the whole thing in a walk no matter how she or anyone else performed. I'd love to see the audience vote totals for each performer from week to week or to know how big a lead she had, it must've been pretty impressive.

Since we know the network and the producers should have known from the beginning that it was almost impossible for Kelly to lose, it sheds a whole 'nother light on their decision to promote her as the underdog and John as the favorite. Obviously they were going for the Cinderella storyline, which meant ignoring the truth. I just think this sort of marketing ploy is pretty common on TV and it's quite fascinating to see it put in play on a show where it was posssible to prove that the PR was a bunch of baloney.

Thanks to everyone for the kind remarks, I really am not trying to diss Kelly's many fans, just wanting to show how influenced we are by the stuff we see on TV, even the stuff that is demonstrably untrue.

Well, I've lost track now. What, in the DWtS world, is demonstrably untrue, versus plain old-fashioned opinion?

TPTB told us that John was the favorite to win the show, but, yet, because the voting system rendered the judges' scores meaningless, they knew from the start that the competitor who was most popular with the audience would win, no matter what the judges said. If you go back and look at the judges scores for each show, as well as who was eliminated and who was second from the bottom, which we were told every single week; you'll discover that Kelly was no less than second in the viewer voting every single week, and was definitely first in the finals or she wouldn't have won. Therefore, the network's assertion that she was an underdog is untrue, she was the viewers' first or second favorite every single week, while John was not or he wouldn't have ended up in the bottom two ever. Unless you think that Kelly was the best dancer on the show every single week, it cannot be true that the voting was based on performance, because she was at the top even when her dancing was not. Certainly she wasn't the first or second best dancer in the first elimination according to most experts, so people must've voted on the basis of some other criteria. It also means she couldn't have come from behind to win, she was always a favorite with the fans. Those things are true and not opinion.

Personally, I'd rather they switched to an American Idol type scoring system with the judges rendering opinions but not giving scores. That way no one in the audience will have any illusions that the judges helped determine the winner. The winner is determined by the audience vote, and, at least this time around, the audience put Kelly at the top every single week.

I guess the part I'm having trouble accepting is that Kelly was so so far ahead of everyone else in voting that she just couldn't be beaten. None of us know how many votes were cast each week, and what the percentages were, since they never told us. The vote totals are erased weekly. Just because I voted for Kelly one week doesn't necessarily mean I will do so again the next. When Joey was eliminated, they couldn't have predicted whether the people who had voted for him were going to vote for Kelly or John or neither. It's quite possible that Joey voters didn't like Kelly and preferred John.

To me, Kelly was the underdog. She started out as a crappy dancer, and she improved a lot with each week. I think that just because ABC knew that she defeated John in the final vote a week in advance of the final show doesn't make her any less of the underdog. Considering the comments that were made to John (you're the one to beat), she was still the underdog.

Yes, people on this thread have talked all about the mathematical calculations and how Kelly was never in danger of being eliminated and that must have meant that she was the top vote getter each week. But maybe people voted for her precisely because she was the underdog. I know that I did, once Rachel was eliminated. I liked the fact that she was working hard and trying and having fun. It seemed to come so effortlessly to the other two, but not to her. I liked her determination and that's why I voted for her. In terms of voting, she may not have been the underdog, but in terms of skills and judges' comments, to me, she was. I have no problems with how ABC promoted her as the underdog.

The final 2 couples standing every week was based on the combined viewer vote and judges vote, so I cannot make any assumptions about K & A's viewer vote ranking -- only that when combined with the judges vote, their ranking was never bottom 2.



The judges' votes were simply opinions; and no matter what any *expert* says about any of the performances, it's an opinion.

Here *are* some true things I can state about DWtS:
Kelly and Alec won.
John and Charlotte lost.
It's over - at least, Season 1 is.
I'm tired of the conspiracy talk.
I'm looking forward to the next DWtS.
Alec is hot. Oh wait, that's an opinion. Sorry.

I tend to agree. The controversy has lost its sting and now it's almost as if the entertainment journalists are just throwing that particular ball around because by keeping it in play it somehow keeps the show alive. They seem to have been also charmed by it and miss it.

I think all of the public debate has actually been good for Kelly because she has demonstrated graciousness and good cheer whenever asked about it.

Although John can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes, I'm glad that he seems to have decided to make no further comments about any possible iffy stuff. Although I would hope that rather than remaining silent, he would instead take every opportunity to go pro-active and chat up all the good -- the other contestants, their talents and how much fun the show was.

The news that he has a new reality show in the works has me somewhat holding my breath. I'm thinking that John probably had a lot to do with the tone and the choreography of his finale freestyle -- Ok now, Charlotte -- jump up and wrap your legs around my waist. No, I'm serious. Trust me. It'll be great -- so I'm wondering what's in store.

I kind of wish he would work on developing some film projects instead. If hypothetically the stupendously fantastic Bill Murray had not been available for Lost in Translation, I would really have liked to have seen what John O'Hurley could have done with that role. I think he would have been great in bringing the combination of humor and pathos required. I can also see John excelling in an Oceans 11 type of film. In fact, now I'm seeing the entire cast of DWtS in one of those buddy capers. Yeah!

I never got a memo from anyone at ABC telling me that JOH was the favorite to win. I heard the judges express their opinions early on that he was the one to beat.

Also, the judges' opinions weren't completely meaningless, particularly in the beginning. The judges' scoring ranks the pairs, and if they rank a pair at or near the bottom, that pair needs a greater audience vote in order to stay on the show. Conversely, a couple ranked very high doesn't need as much of an audience vote in order to stay on the show. Early on, a couple ranked first by the judges can't be voted out UNLESS the viewer vote totals rank the entire field in reverse order of the judges (thus tying all couples, but with the judges' favorite getting the fewest audience votes). Thus, a first place ranking from the judges can keep a couple on the show, even if they rank low - even dead last - with the audience.

That is actually statistically untrue:
1st week Kelly must have come in at least 2nd out of 6 in voting;
2nd week Kelly must have come in at least 3rd out of 5 in voting;
3rd week Kelly must have come in at least 3rd out of 4 in voting;
4th week Kelly must have come in at least 2nd out of 3 in voting;
5th week Kelly came in 1st out of 2 in voting.

We also have to take into account that the number of competitors decreases each round, so that finishing 3rd out of 5 people or 3rd out of 4 people or 2nd out of 3 people can hardly be considered always coming in as a top vote getter.

It is much different from saying Kelly always came in at least 3rd in voting out of a steady pool of 10 or more contestants. It reminds me when my team won 2nd place in the state in our division... turned out there were only 3 schools in that division! But we like to omit the last fact when we brag about our ranking, hee!

Exactly. I posted an example earlier where the judges opinions would have mattered very much - the semi-finals. If Joey had scored just 2 more points to tie with Kelly, there was a very real possibility that John would have gone home. The same with Rachel's Samba - if she had tied with Kelly that night, it very well could have saved her. The same could be said for Trista and Evander. We will never know for sure because we were never told the audience votes, but when you do the math, the judges scores were certainly important.

[/QUOTE]the judges scores were certainly important.

The judges' scores were important as far as keeping a contestant on the show, but not in deciding the winner.

I've come to the conclusion that this show was falsely advertised as a reality show, when in fact it was, and will be, a dramedy. Too much meddling from ABC with its "story line" ruined its credibility. When someone who dances like Kelly can win a dance competition over a John, Joey or Rachel, well then the competition had nothing to do with dance ability. DWTS was a farce.

kittybidee I was gonna post the exact same thing, hee! Also, the probability that voting would end up the exact reverse order of the judge's ranking every week is pretty low, so the judges do have a tangible input on who advances.

You can even possibly argue that ABC and the creators of the show were doing their best to value the judges opinion by giving it the same weight as audience voting, as they could have easily gone the AI route. The only time audience vote trumps judges is in the event of a tie. And I don't think it's at all underhanded at that impasse to let viewers decide who they want to see on their tv.

LOL RedHotDoc! Maybe we also shouldn't let it pass those scheming producers to have brainwashed us into thinking Alec is hot ;)

You don't ever need to be sorry for that opinion.



Word.

One more thought about the "fall". The judges weren't supposed to be judging the pros, but the stars - maybe they figured the fall was Alec's fault and didn't mark Kelly down because of it. Of course, they did hammer Joey on the foxtrot because of the choreography, but Len did mention that there was poor footwork on Joey's part.

Just something else to put out there.

One more thought about the "fall". The judges weren't supposed to be judging the pros, but the stars - maybe they figured the fall was Alec's fault and didn't mark Kelly down because of it. Of course, they did hammer Joey on the foxtrot because of the choreography, but Len did mention that there was poor footwork on Joey's part.[QUOTE]

Please, let's not pretend that the results had anything to do with who dances better. Joey had to leave because ABC decided to keep John. Joey's low scores were to counteract his audience votes from the previous week. None of the stars had good foot work and there was nothing wrong with Ashly's American style show dance foxtrot. If you want to talk about choreography, how about that goulash Alec was trying to pass off as a Paso.

Kelly fell because she lost her balance.

You have your opinion, I have mine. I think that Kelly's overall performance on the freestyle was better than John's and the judges agreed.

I think this show was what it was and nothing more. It played out the way it did without any manipulation on the producer's part because it didn't need anything else.

Actually none of the results could have statistically precluded John from finishing in the top 2 in viewer voting every single week.

Only in week 4 was John in the bottom 2, when he placed 3rd with the judges score out of 4 competitors... he could have came in 2nd in audience voting and still ended up in the bottom 2! Remember Kelly placed 1st with the judges that night, so she could have come in 3rd in voting and still be safe.

So not only could John have been top 2 in audience vote every week, he could have actually finished ahead of Kelly in viewer voting every single week except in the voting for the finale! GASP! John might really have been the judge & FAN favorite coming in and Kelly the underdog!

BTW, the phone lines were closed that night, but I thought internet voting continued 'til Tuesday? So ABC might not have been able to call the result until then and the promos could still have been a valid indication of favorite and underdog given the above possibility.

Now you're talkin!



That's not an opinion. That's a fact [/imo] ;)

Y'all, you have had plenty of warning. If you think someone else's opinion is stupid, you can either ignore it, or you can respectfully disagree. If we keep getting sarcastic snotting off at each other in this thread, then a whole bunch of warnings and bootings are going to occur, which seems like a really unfortunate and unnecessary outcome to provoke over something as freakin' silly as Dancing With The Stars.

If you've spoken your mind, cool it.

The latest on the Alec front (or back, because they are both fine)...

Alec's personal website is opening soon according to Kelly's webmaster, who is the one doing Alec's site. There is a forum, and I hope Alec is as good about answering questions there as he was on Kelly's DWTS site.

BTW, Dirty Dancing is showing tomorrow at 5PM Eastern on the ABC Family Channel for those who need their Swayze fix.

I'm not holding my breath (although I do hate reality shows in general), so much as I am curious to see what it will be about. For example, I think it would be cool if it were a "follow John as he and Charlotte continue his training in preparation for Broadway show [x]" thing. From what I can see, it looks like John is a very intelligent and classy guy with a lot going on (producing movies, acting gigs, running business(es), charity work, etc.) and fairly highbrow tastes/hobbies (gourmet food, golf, accomplished singer/musician). I would be surprised if he did something that somehow didn't reflect that.

LOL! That's funny because I was thinking the exact opposite. :) I adored J/C's freestyle because of its freshness and playfulness. I just love it when people step out of their comfort zones. Still, based on John and Charlotte's respective reactions after the routine (John laughing, but also seeming embarrassed; Charlotte laughing, but also encouraging "you did well!"), I was guessing that it was Charlotte's idea to play against stereotypes and go with a more "youthful" routine and John was game enough to go along with it for her. :)

However, it is completely impossible for the judges to eliminate the audience favorite from week to week. Even if the favorite was ranked last by the judges, he/she would have the tiebreakers and could beat out every other competitor to remain in the competition. Kelly did exactly that the first week, not even making the bottom two. The judges can prevent a someone who is not the favorite from coming in last, which they might've done with John, but can't do a thing to prevent the crowd favorite from winning it all.


In some cases you can't, but in most weeks, by looking at who got eliminated, you can indeed tell that Kelly was a viewer vote favorite, there is no other contestant who comes close to her in rankings with the audience.


However, the people telling John he was 'the one to beat' had absolutely no control over who would win the competition and they knew it. It's the exact same thing that happens on American Idol when Simon says that sort of stuff. It might be the judges' opinion but it doesn't have any connection whatsoever to the actual outcome. If anything, the judges comments about John may have caused some viewers to vote for Kelly, it certainly happens on AI all the time.


Except of course, she could have been first or second and not third in all of those cases. In any event, we know she was never, ever, at the bottom of the viewer rankings, even when her dancing sucked. The same cannot be said of anyone else on the show.

You're right, I screwed up and trusted someone else's calculations for all but the first and last two weeks. When you look at who was eliminated though and who was put through, it is very unlikely that Kelly wasn't ranked at the top most weeks since the folks who would've had to have gotten more viewer votes and been untouchable didn't come close to making the finals. For that many fans to have deserted their favorite one week to push that person from top of the list to the bottom seems unlikely. If you do the same calculations for John and the other competitors, it is clear that Kelly had the best 'batting average' of any of the stars, indicating she did indeed have some sort of built in advantage on the show.

No other star was as consistently at the top of the rankings with the viewers and that happened at the very beginning of the show and persisted through to the end indicating that Kelly had an unwavering block of voters in her corner. There wasn't anyone else who didn't make the bottom two ever, including John. While lots of people did vote according to their feelings about that week's performances, there was a large number who probably voted for Kelly every time, otherwise she wouldn't have so consistently avoided the basement even when the judges were scoring her low.

I don't think Joey was as good a ball-room dancer as Kelly, esp. the style that the judges were looking for. He kept putting jumps aand leaps in that no one elese was doing. It looked fabulous, but it wasn't the dance they were supposed to be doing.

peppypen said

This is a distinction as fine as frog's hair, but we don't know how close any of the rankings were. K/A might have beaten J/C by two calls the last night, or they might have won by two million. I doubt we'll ever know...

hi pennypen
I hope you were able to read my last post. As I mentioned it is very possible for John to have been in top 2 of viewer voting every week, even the time he was at the bottom 2. Again the week he landed in the bottom 2, judges had put him in 3rd place. The difference at this point between Kelly escaping bottom 2 despite being ranked low by the judges is that there were only 4 contestants left, so the probability that a top vote getter will land in the bottom 2 is significantly much higher.

All that this requires is that John, Joey and Kelly be consistently the top 3 vote getters -- except week 1 when Evander joins them, then he's gone after that so his audience votes likely redistributed. The difference in our assumptions is what jhlipton commented on:

One possibility is that Kelly had an insurmountable lead in total votes over John and Joey. But since we don't know the actual viewer totals, only the possible rankings, it is also quite possible that the voting was close and preference changed any given week that the viewer rankings could easily shift within the top 3.

Both possibilities rely on the nature of fan voting and I thought there was good discussion about this just a week ago... Are most voters the rabid fans who would vote for their favorite no matter what -- judging by the ABC board, it seems John, Joey & Kelly had their own set of rabid fans and detractors. The other possibility is that the majority of voters, despite being a fan of Seinfeld, NKOTB or GH, are not beholden to blind support and are capable of enjoying and appreciating the dancing and could change their preference week by week. I don't think we will ever know since we are not privy to the raw voting totals and could only consider the possible iterations of voter ranking.

Yep, the easy way to defuse all the controversy would be for the network to release some statistics on the viewer voting, that's what American Idol does and it keeps the arguments to a minimum. The fact that in the face of all the controversy that they haven't told us Kelly's margin of victory only makes it more suspicious that John was right, she had a huge lead due to a built in fan base that could not be overcome by the votes based on performance. The fact that she was first or second with the audience even in a week where her dancing was not and that, in every other incarnation of the show, all produced by the same people, a network star won the competition too, suggests an insurmountable advantage for the network competitor. If ABC would simply tell us that she won by 5% or 50%, we'd be able to put it to rest either way. Better yet, let us know how everyone ranked with the audience from week to week and what percent separated the leader from second place. The fact that they haven't indicates that they might not want the viewers to become aware of how skewed the 'contest' really is.

The whole problem with the scoring lies with the tiebreaker. In a contest with so few contestants, where the scoring is done in whole numbers and not percentages, ties are going to be inevitable, and the tiebreaker then becomes crucial. Using some other means to break the ties would solve the problem and prevent viewers from stuffing the ballot box unfairly for one participant.

That assumes we can believe what ABC says. :) Absent independent verification, I'd take anything they say with a boulder of salt.

I know. I'm jaded. ;)

I am still undecided with regards to the tiebreaker, I can see arguments to either giving the viewer vote the deciding weight or the judges score. I'm not sure what other means they can employ?

We might not see changes though, only because IMHO ABC and the creators of the show intended this to be just a fun, cheeky bragging-rights-type competition between celebs with the prize being an uber-cheesy trophy, more akin to a good-natured dancing-karaoke between friends and collegues rather than an Olympic-type/sanctioned ballroom competition or one with millions/contract at stake.

For my part, I saw it as the former and would have enjoyed watching no matter who won because the reality appeal for me was watching celebs I grew up with learn to dance, struggle a bit but give it their all and have fun doing something out of their element.

I agree! :) We do need the voting total and the percentages each week for all the contestants to make a robust analysis of voting trend, finale percentages would not be enough. I doubt we will ever get that from ABC -- it is possible they are hiding something, though I think it is also likely they just didn't expect people -- like myself :) -- would want to do a rigorious statistical analyis of the voting trend for their cheesy summer replacement show.

ETA barkley they should have "Alec is hot" as a separate forum section on its own! He does look much, much sexier with more muscle weight on him judging by the pic on his site.

As to the idea that ABC conducted pre-show polls to ascertain who would win it all, for some reason I doubt that sort of money was funneled into this show. I also doubt that pre-show polls would have necessarily predicted a Kelly win. I doubt pre-show polls would have predicted a Kelly-John finals, as they were two of the lesser known celebrities. But, that's not based on anything other than my own suppositions. The hype before the show was all about Evander and Joey, I thought, not Kelly (who?) and John (who?).

Plus, I think we may be discounting the professional partner factor. Charlotte and Alec, in my opinion, were both great partners and choreographers (except for J/C's freestyle, a total ugh in my opinion). They both made their star partners look much better by how much they worked to make it seem the stars were doing more. I think a significant chunk of votes were coming in to keep them on the screen as much as to applaud the efforts of John and Kelly. I know many of my friends and fellow-TWOPers voted for Alec (sigh!) as much as voted for Kelly, if not more. I'd imagine John got many votes from those who were Charlotte fans.

I really don't feel all that hoodwinked or whatever by ABC in their portrayal of John and Kelly. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the whole "Kelly is the underdog" thing was based purely upon the cutting remarks of the judges in the first show, and her landing in the bottom that first week. And the "John as the king of ballroom" was similarly an angle that was worked around the judges' comments, and not necessarily the viewers' votes. We aren't privy to the audience vote results, but we do know what the judges think of the couples. And I think ABC just crafted the story around that. Keep in mind, this show wasn't taped months ago -- there wasn't a lot of time for TPTB to sift through hours of tape to "fabricate" a story over weeks of footage.

I believe that this: is the crux of the matter. They didn't even expect it to be anything but a cheap time filler; they almost certainly didn't expect serious statistical analysis of the scoring system.

ABC didn't need to conduct any polls at all, the producers had already presented the show on multiple occasions in other countries using the same voting system, and, each time, the network star won. If, in at least one of those cases, voting
trends indicated a built-in advantage for certain performer in the form of block voting, the producers had all the 'research' needed to know the same thing could happen here. For that matter, I doubt their development of the scoring system was done in a vacuum, they wouldn't have needed to see it in action to know that a large fanbase could control the contest in favor of a star regardless of performance.

There is a ton of data on audience voting trends available anyway, and the networks use it every single day, no extra work was needed to see that it would be possible to set up the show to look like a performance based competition even if a large portion of the voters weren't considering the performances at all. Since the voting system looks fine at first glance, but, with a little scrutiny it becomes apparent that if one star has an unwavering large enough fanbase, that person will win no matter what, it seems the producers weren't really interested in a performance based competition anyway. It might have been a selling point, that the network could promote the show as a piece of fluff, but, with the appropriate slate of 'stars', be assured of the winner well in advance, allowing them to plug another of their shows as a bonus when their star wins the big prize. In other words,the producers have used the same flawed voting system time after time, why would they do that unless they (and the network) find it advantageous to know the winner weeks in advance?

Okay, I think the point is made and the horse is dead. Let's move along.

There is a nice article in this week's (July 24-30) TV Guide about KM's reaction to winning, her opinion of her costumes, and some stuff about the next DWtS. I tried to find any of this on their website, but either it's not there, or I lack the search skills.

The site might be acting up. I tried to register to get full access to the search feature and all I get is "Unable to save. Try again." (Or maybe TV Guide objects I'm older than the demographic it's trying to attract.)

Read the article while I was in line at the grocery store. Can't remember much of what was in it. Maybe it'll show up once the next new issue hits the stands?