D3 being saved - theory

I think this is going to be an empty thread - a lot of scratching of heads going on. As I said elsewhere my theory is that there is little or no direct manipulation of sing-offs or judges' decisions. And if there was the fiasco last week put an end to it.

last week's fiasco just proved TPTB have mastered the manipulation

It was smoother when Cowell was alpha. Now the alpha is a trusted producer but someone who can’t sit at the desk with the judge puppets. Hence the headless chickens.

Oh and as for the OP - D3 gives them a bit of boyband battle possibilities and Melanie disappointed them. (Last week they would have saved Melanie).

But all it has done is create a surge for support of D3 and taken the emphasis off Union J being the "next big boyband in the UK", whilst not creating any drama whatsoever.

Melanie could have gone far, Ruth was b2 very early on too iirc.

Baffled. Thankful not to bet after b2 was announced as would've lost a packet.

Melanie could have gone far, Ruth was b2 very early on too iirc.

I saw the Ruth series last year, not live, and found Ruth captivating. Different league imo.

They managed to turn a one trick pony but perfectly acceptable hippy rock chick with next to no chance of winning into something I can't even begin to find the words to describe with (obviously) zero chance of winning.  Those new stylists as bad as the last lot.

Scratching my head too. The most possible reason is to continue the narrative of the battle of the boybands theme, but that does look a bit forlorn.
Could be the notion of lets make Gary look an idiot and put him as the stooge instead of Louis, whereby when his acts have gone he can focus on pushing TCO.
They may have realised he has 4 duffers and in order to get one to respectable finish the other three have to be dispensed with.
Finally it is possible they couldnt give a toss and rather than feed the conspiracy theories they just let the judges do there own thing. In years gone by they were told not to send it to deadlock unless absolutely necessary eg saving an act they wanted Jedward or Rylan when the narrative has been they were duffers. To me the deadlock decision was strange when they could have saved either without too much controversy, I guess it looks like the public decided playing down the fix allegations.
The X Factor rulebook has been thrown out of the window, the quicker we get a new copy the easier it will be.

You're making too much of this JOT. Why sustain a totally useless jock rocker, about as contemporary as Elkie Brooks (as Lou pointed out) when they can have a nice little boyband for an extra couple of weeks?   It reminds me of them saving useless Lloyd at least once

And I think you are possibly right, they were probably told to make it look strictly hands off last night

Melanie could have gone far   Load of nonsense jack, she was awful. The only thing that could have made that true is the Scottish vote, nope she didn't excite them either

My thoughts are that this weekend was just about getting rid of Shaky.All the relatively safe acts were put on early,with Shaky sandwiched inbetween,and all the at risk acts late.Mel was probably third bottom last week,hence the pimp to improve her %.When this failed to come off,they simply cut loose Mel knowing it is now virtually impossible to engineer votes for her,and so making it easier to manipulate future evictions.

Sounds fair enough hems.

I have to say my parents were fans of Elkie Brooks, and having seen her live she is nothing like Melanie.  Beautiful silky smooth vocals as well as being able to rock it up.  Mel was the vocal equivalent of having a go at your privates with a cheese grater.

Yep, I'd agree, Mel just about as fashionable as Elkie Brooks, that's all. Maybe Bonnie Tyler would have been a better example, but I'm sure she was far better too.  There's a reason why these old koonts have never got anywhere

squares

Will you ever agree with anything I say?

I've seen 'Elkie' too and thought they sounded similar.  I thought Melanie had a good strong voice and was shocked she went last night but I do think it's very close at the bottom so she had as good a chance to go as about 10 of them I suppose.

Mel was the vocal equivalent of having a go at your privates with a cheese grater.

Don't knock it til you've tried it squares

As for Elkie, I agree. My parents were fans too and I grew up listening to lots of stuff.

of her stuff*

blimey - from as far back as Robert Palmer / Vinegar Joe days?

Barlow lost two acts in a row.....personally i do not think he will be happy losing another one so soon and will make that clear to the producers.....expect kye and maloney to go through the next two weeks.

Meh, as soon as Baloney is B2 they will hoik him out

I'm sure they'd rather Gary just concentrated on ramping Ella

Oct 15, 2012 -- 9:39AM, squares wrote:

blimey - from as far back as Robert Palmer / Vinegar Joe days?

More her later solo stuff. Pearls a singer, etc.  Remember I'm younger than you mate

After the fall out from last weekend, this weekend looked to be one where "they" seemed to want to play it pretty straight - none of the critiques were too horrible or OTT, no real drama played out in the results show.

Thanks for the reminder

Agree with a lot of the above - they had to play it straight this week...

But what is interesting is the running order.  I was convinced that they were trying to do a hatchet job on Baloney, but it may well have backfired as he was in the 'favoured' half with all the decent acts, while all the dross was towards the end (meaning many viewers may simply have switched off).  If Rylan really is hated that much, then many people may have reached for the remote before the show was finished.

With the phone lines opening at the start maybe, just maybe, the prods are just fishing in the dark.  The old rules may not apply anymore - in which case they really are out of control.  Mel was only the second act to go from an early pimp slot, following Carolynne in trap 12 last week.  Too early to draw any concrete conclusions, but the old running order routine may have been flipped on its head.

Looks like option 4 then. I can see why Dan went down the route of thinking tptb would favour Melanie. After all last week getting rid of District 3 seemed to be the plan even this week it was like they couldnt give a toss about them. The truth seems to be they couldnt give a toss about Melanie either, so lets just play it straight.
But thats 2 weeks running their plan a has not come to fruition assuming getting rid of Christopher was the plan, so where do they go from here?

Chris for pimp after Rylan I assume

Why assume they're trying to get rid of Chris? He was virtually the star of boot camp and judges houses.

If anybody gets the new rule book can I have a copy please

JO - I was about to write the same... They didn't really care much for either of them, so why not let the public decide.

They will be happy enough for the battle of the boy bands to continue for a little while yet if UJ are polling well enough.  The deramping of D3 has already begun so it's only a matter of time.  They'll be able to ditch them when it suits anyway...

Yes, I'd like a copy of that new rule book too!  Thankfully I had a saver on Mel at 25/1, but this is already having an impact on the stocking fillers for Christmas!

For once I don't think they knew who was bottom of the vote

I agree. It didn't matter anyway. First genuine deadlock we've seen in years!

The Fink says it - though must admit on first sight it looked that way with his draw.

They have been adaptable in past years though, and gone from anti a contestant to seeing that they are actually worth keeping, so it can happen.

Maybe they're struggling with their trusty rule book this year because one (maybe two) acts are taking up such a massive share of the votes there's so little between the rest making it very hard for them to "control" things as effectively as in the past.  Maybe 9 or 10 on low %ages, as opposed to perhaps 4 or 5 in the past.

My own view, FWIW, is that Chris was pimped for the wild card because they knew he would just be cannon fodder when needed.

However, the polls suggest that he does have a base of support as a result of the airtime (and scouse factor of course) which may make him hard to shift.

I think Saturday was an effort to nobble him - it wasn't just the sandwich, but the VT, song choice, negative comments... Make no mistake, they want him to go sooner rather than later.

Definitely Squares - my guess is that very little separated the bottom 5/6 last night.

Did an incredible amount of trading over the weekend, when I saw the running order lumped pn Christopher and Union J to go laid Union J for top group piled into Melanie the pimp act for top over and outright Laid Melanie for bottom 2 and elimination.
Then suddenly I had to reverse reverse reverse as best I could managed to get out of my positions and ended up in front mainly due to Melanie bottom 2 but next week what positions do I take it used to be far far easier

Was just going to type something along similar lines, maybe they've misjudged the scouse support (franked by Rebecca and Emily's comments last night) - thought they were pimping through someone they could ditch at the drop of a hat and now they're left with a floater that's not so easy to flush away.

JO - don't worry, you were not alone on that score!  Chris escaping was the most painful result for me, but I ended up having positions on half the field.  Just ridiculous!  No damage done, but I'll have to rein it in for future weeks.  On the plus side, you can still get decent value in running (Mel was 25/1 to go, 7/1 for B2) to cover any losses if required...

Who remembers the 'insider' money for Poole has week?   Same money at similar prices this week .... fail

(for Baloney b2)

Certainly makes everything a lot more muddy this week...

I'm not sure I like that - difficult to predict future weeks.

better prices if you can crack it tho.

That's certainly true.  Got to remember that the bookies are all at sea too.  Incredible variations in prices this weekend - and double digits available on most of the field at some point.

Main regret is not reducing my Maloney green enough, was getting the vibes he would be safe and laid off, just not enough in hindsight. The drift on Maloney was not insiders was just people wising up to the fact he could well be safe. Though it is pleasing that there are no insiders.

Maybe the 1.7 Poole backer just got lucky

I think 3 things.

1. They genuinely didnt know who was bottom this week.
2. They didn't care who went last week.
3. Most importantly...the "pimp slot" wasn't a pimp slot last week.

Did you spot the SCD voting leak CB?  I know you like those

I'm not betting on it but I'm interested all the same?

Just Johnny Ball on BBC Breakfast spilling the beans that Lisa topped the vote massively on Sat

any idea what time he was on so I can listen to what he said?

I think 3 things.
1. They genuinely didnt know who was bottom this week.
2. They didn't care who went last week.
3. Most importantly...the "pimp slot" wasn't a pimp slot last week.

Clyde by "they" in 1. you mean the judges and "they" in 2. you mean the producers?

You think the judges were given a free rein in the Melanie vote?

There's two much imv reading into it. Neither was 'supposed' to go, but Melanie from pimp getting bottom votes what more was there to do with her? The 3 boys are easier to work with, re styling etc. Just a judgement production choice.

By they I meant the judges not the producers.  The producers must know.

"There's two much imv reading into it. Neither was 'supposed' to go, but Melanie from pimp getting bottom votes what more was there to do with her? The 3 boys are easier to work with, re styling etc. Just a judgement production choice."

I always thought exactly that Cider. Neither supposed to go, neither especially favoured to stay, but it was still a "production choice" rather than judges choice.

Oct 16, 2012 -- 6:58PM, CLYDEBANK29 wrote:

any idea what time he was on so I can listen to what he said?

About 9.10 BBc 1

Breakfast not on iplayer CB, was looking myself. Reported on the Lisa or SCD thread though

Cider it wasn't a pimp slot.  Far from it imv.  The show was over 2 hours long and it finished at 10.30pm.  The voting lines were open throughout.  Many people who started watching the show had switched off before the end I reckon. 

When all is said and done the decision to open lines from the start of the show is more to do with the late tv slot imo.

Rylan went just before who they obviously wanted the biggest vote possible for. They always wanted to finish the show on a high I don't think that has changed.

And on 5Live this morning.

Drop in viewers might be more to do with lines opening at the start. Maybe it's backfiring in an unexpected way. When you get a hot fav like Ella some might wait for her and then switch off or do something else.

Only 6M were still watching when Mel sang.

What is clear is its much more difficult to judge where the plum draw is.  No act has finished in the b2 from a first half slot in the 1st 2 weeks.  Melanie went 3rd in week 1 and last in week 2.  The show is very long' starting in a primetime slot and now finishing in a non primetime slot.

I wouldn't want to be 1st up this week with the 20 minute overlap

I've always thought the plum draw was more to do with maintaining interest in the show, than generating extra votes for any particular person. The ordering is for balance. THEY will have data on traditional system for years and knew what worked for them. Now they have new data to work on.

I'll predict we'll see Ella after SCD and before 9.30 on Sat   1.01

As for them being 'straight', well the vote may have been straight but the judges' comments were still highly dubious at times, in particular all comments about Kye.  Barlow is not tone deaf and yet he praised Kye's vocal performance which was weak and featured many off notes.

Theyknow

I thought the judges praised just about all of the acts with over the top remarks.  Yes Kye wasn't great was he.