TV and Telephone Voting

Television shows that take place over the course of an evening which are decided by telephone voting are frequently blighted by what I call the "I've just come in from the pub mob" and the "I've watched something else and then just flipped over for the end posse".

The problem
What happens is these groups of people both only see the end of the show and then, understandably, vote for one of the later candidates/acts/talents (CATs), because that's one of the ones they've seen. This gives the final CAT a significant advantage over everyone else and, indeed, depending on the country's pub culture and the other programmes on that evening with significant viewing shares, each CAT an advantage over all the ones who were on before them.

Solutions so far
There are measures designed to counteract this. One is having each CAT having to do something more than once. If, in a singing show with three CATs, each CAT has to sing twice, then you at least have CAT1 singing once after each of CAT3 and CAT2 has sung their first song (assuming a 1,2,3,1,2,3 order) - or you could have a different order like 1,2,3,3,2,1 to try to maximise fairness. Whatever you do though, you have one CAT who's on last and who catches the votes of the aforementioned mob and posse.

Another idea is to open the voting lines straight away, before any CATs have even been on stage. This is flawed insofar as it means that people who vote based on a performance have more time to vote for certain CATs whilst people who just vote based on prior sympathies can vote regardless of what the CATs actually do on the night.

So if we want a fair vote reflective of people's assessments of what the CATs have done during the show, this doesn't work. You could argue that being able to vote for CAT1 balances out the swing to CAT3 from the mob and posse, but having two terrible features in a system and hoping they approximately balance one another out is a bit like throwing a few nukes around and hoping more baddies than goodies die: neither scientific nor likely to work.

What you could do
My suggestion is to get people to register to vote. This would take place in the waffle that happens at the start of the show before any CATs have been on. This segment usually takes at least 15 minutes (on a standard Saturday evening format) and is ample time for people who are generally interesting in digging in for the evening to send a short text message (SMS) or ring up a number.

By registering they would make themselves (or anyone with the same phone number) eligible to vote during the voting phase, which would only begin after the last CAT's last performance. This seems technically straightforward to implement and would restrict voting to those people who have seen the whole show and so can make a fair decision. Clearly, some people might have some chips or something and miss one of the CATs, but you can imagine people's chip-eating habits to be varied enough for this to even itself out and not significantly (dis)advantage one CAT over another.

I don't really see many problems with this. You could, for example, easily adjust the price of calls to stop having to ring in twice hitting the voters' bank balances too much. It doesn't solve the fact that some certain audience sections (with some correlation with the kind of CAT they like) are more likely to take part in a phone vote than others, but that's true of all votes. At a parliamentary election, there are some sections of the electorate who would rather go down the pub than go cast their vote. And they automatically get underrepresented in the House of Commons.

The only real flaw I can see in this system is that it would probably lead to fewer votes coming in, which would mean less money being made. But if there has to be a victim for the sake of overall fairness, then you could find a worse one than television producers.

Teeth and their cleaning

English translation follows the German text.

Brüder lerne von den Eltern, wie sie die Zähne putzen sollen. Entweder gucken sie es einfach ab, oder sie bekommen etwas formelleren Unterricht. Auf jeden Fall sind die Eltern die Quelle der Zähne-Putztechnik beider Brüder. Entsprechend putzen sie sich die Zähne auf ähnliche Art und Weise. Sobald man aber außerhalb des engen Familienkreises ist, erfährt man, dass es in anderen Familien nicht so ist. Meistens passiert das zum erstenmal in einem Pionierlager oder sonst auf einem Campingurlaub, wo Jungen aus mehreren Elternhäusern sich zusammen finden.
Dann sehen sie alle, dass sich manche schneller, manche langsamer, manche schäumiger, manche eher zurückhaltend die Zähne putzen. Manche folgen einer logischen Struktur und manche einer strukturlosen Hektik. Vor dem Spülbecken am Campingplatz sind diese Unterschiede interessant, aber im Grunde genommen unwichtig.
Später sind die Jungen nicht mehr Jungen, sondern junge Erwachsene, die alleine oder mit einer Freundin oder einem Freund wohnen. Häufig passiert es, dass sie in dieser neuen Situation sich nicht mehr gebunden an den Waschbecken die Zähne putzen, sondern sie bewegen sich etwas freier. Sie fangen zwar logischerweise im Badezimmer an, da die Zahnpasta sich dort befindet, aber während der zwei-drei Minuten gehen sie möglicherweise etwas durch die Gänge spazieren. Vielleicht läuft eine Sendung im Fernsehen über eine gefährdete Krötenspezies, die man sich anschauen möchte. Man läuft also ins Wohnzimmer ohne das Zähneputzen zu unterbrechen.
Hier erscheinen die Unterschiede, die früher unwichtig, wenn schon interessant, waren, als äußert entscheidend. Wer aus seinem Munde hin- und herschäumt, befleckt seinen Wohnzimmerteppich. Wer zu hektisch putzt, muss die Lautstärke seines Fernsehers aufpumpen. Wer zu methodisch putzt, solange diese Methodik einen gewissen Geistesaufwand benötigt, kann sich schwer auf die Sendung konzentrieren. Wer es vermag, die Zähne mit der linken (bzw. rechten, hier wird die schwächere Hand gemeint) Hand zu putzen, der kann nebenbei andere Tätigkeiten ausüben, wie die obengenannte Aufpumpung der Lautstärke seines Fernsehers, auch wenn diese Tätigkeiten durch ihre Kompliziertheit den Einsatz der rechten (bzw. linken, hier wird die stärkere Hand gemeint) Hand verlangen.
Es gibt Tätigkeiten, die man auch bei allem Können mit Zähneputzen trotzdem nicht kombinieren soll. Ein Beispiel hierfür ist Müllwebringen oder Toilettenputzen. (Das sind zwei Beipiele, aber das macht nichts.) Die Kombination unangenehmer Gerüche und des Geschmacks einer Minzpasta ist selten erwünscht.
Auch zu bedenken: man soll nichts machen, auch wenn man es kann, was dazu führt, dass man das Zähneputzen komplett vergisst. Sonst steht man eine halbe Stunde später mit einem überangestrengten Handgelenk und einem ausgetrockneten Mund da.
Am besten haben's diejenigen, die die Technik je nach Nebentätigkeit verändern können. Wer mal schnell, mal langsam, mal mit links (bzw. rechts), mal mit rechts (bzw. links) das alles kann, ihm stehen alle Türen offen. Man hat's nur besser, wenn man den Mund so trainiert, dass man sich die Zähne ganz ohne Hände putzen kann. Aber das können nur die mit den richtig vorausdenkenden Eltern.
Bis morgen.


Brothers learn from their parents how they should clean their teeth. They either learn by copying or they receive a more formal kind of lesson. At any rate, the parents are the source of the teeth-cleaning technique of both brothers. It then follows that they clean their teeth in a similar manner. However, as soon as you step outside the inner family circle, you find out that it isn't like that in other families. This usually happens for the first time at some sort of Pioneer Camp or at some other camping holiday, where boys from several parents' households find themselves in the same place.
Then everyone sees that some people clean their teeth faster, some slower, some foamier, some more reservedly. Some follow a logical structure and some an unstructured hecticity. In front of the basin at the campsite, these differences are interesting, but basically unimportant.
Later the boys are no longer boys, but young adults, who live alone or with a girlfriend or boyfriend. It often happens that they, in this new situation, no longer clean their teeth bound to the basin, but move around more freely. The logically start in the bathroom, because that's where the toothpaste is to be found, but during the two-three minutes they possibly go for a walk through the halls. Maybe there is a program on television about an endangeren species of toad, which is worth a look. So you go into the living room without interrupting the teeth-cleaning process.
Now the differences, which used to be unimportant, if interesting, show themselves to be of decisive importance. He who foams back and forth from the mouth sullies his living room carpet. He who cleans with too much hecticity has to pump up the volume of his television. He who cleans too methodically, assuming this methodology requires a certain amount of mental concentration, finds it hard to concentrate on the program. He who is able to clean his teeth with his left (or possibly right, here we are dealing with the weaker hand) hand can carry out other activities at the same time, such as the aforementioned pumping up of the volume of his television, even if the complex nature of these activities means that they demand the usage of the right (or possibly left, here we are dealing with the stronger hand) hand.
There are activites, which, however able you are to do them, you should still not combine with teeth-cleaning. One example is taking out the trash or cleaning the toilet. (That's two examples but no matter.) The combination of unpleasant smells and the taste of a minty paste is rarely desirable.
Also worth noting: you shouldn't do anything, even if you can, which leads to your forgetting the teeth-cleaning completely. Otherwise you end up half an hour later with an overstrained wrist and a dry mouth.
The people who are best off are those who can alter their technique according to the other activity. He who can do this now quickly, now slowly, now with his left (or right), now with his right (or left), for him is no door closed. The only people who are better off are those who have a sufficiently-trained mouth which means that they can clean their teeth without the need for the hands at all. But the only people who can do that are those with parents of quite exceptional foresight.
See you tomorrow.