Could I recomend sucking on a fisherman's friend.
The Sitcom Trials 2008 Page 16
I agree that the most mates = most votes = best chance formula isn't the way forward. We need to find a compromise.
We can't ignore the audience vote (nor do we want to). If the audience as a whole goes wild over a certain sitcom and we discard their opinion they'll feel (understandably) sidelined. We need to take account of the audience vote.
It costs us a lot of money to hire the venue. Even a full house for every single round generates very little in return for the year's work we've put into this. We need to be assured that we can get an audience. If not we'll lose money putting on other people's work. Not hard to see that that's a process with a very short shelf-life. We'd like the Trials to continue, but we're not a charity.
So what's the solution?
We have our ideas, but in a spirit of democracy (what's a forum for if not sharing ideas?) I throw it open to you. Devise a system that makes the audience feel that their presence is crucial, that their votes matter, while at the same time guaranteeing the fairest crack of the whip for all writers, from the wildly gregarious to the humblest wallflower.
Then we'll vote on it.
Quote: simon wright @ September 14 2008, 11:44 AM BSTI agree that the most mates = most votes = best chance formula isn't the way forward. We need to find a compromise.
We can't ignore the audience vote (nor do we want to). If the audience as a whole goes wild over a certain sitcom and we discard their opinion they'll feel (understandably) sidelined. We need to take account of the audience vote.
It costs us a lot of money to hire the venue. Even a full house for every single round generates very little in return for the year's work we've put into this. We need to be assured that we can get an audience. If not we'll lose money putting on other people's work. Not hard to see that that's a process with a very short shelf-life. We'd like the Trials to continue, but we're not a charity.
So what's the solution?
We have our ideas, but in a spirit of democracy (what's a forum for if not sharing ideas?) I throw it open to you. Devise a system that makes the audience feel that their presence is crucial, that their votes matter, while at the same time guaranteeing the fairest crack of the whip for all writers, from the wildly gregarious to the humblest wallflower.
Then we'll vote on it.
I am not sure I agree there is a connection between the voting aspect and people bringing their mates along. Surely the mates are coming along to see their friends work being performed. As you say if the audience as a whole goes wild becaue they are enjoying it that is the only kind of vote you need. Any indusrty professional on a panel can tell if responses are genuine or engendered by a power base in the audience. I know you are not a charity but I am sure some industry pros could be persuaded to act as a panel without having to pay them a fee. The Sitcom Factor.
Surely the other issue is that some kind of policing sould be enforced in terms of people talking over other people's shows etc, sabotaging people's, with less friends in the audience, attenpts: it wouldn't happen in the real theatre and it doesn't lend the proceedings much of a professional air which I would have thought is what you were going for.
The winner should be chosen by Simon and his team
The winner should be chosen by me! Maybe it could be done a bit like Britain's got talent. A panel of judges decide, but the audience are like the "fourth judge".
Quote: bushbaby @ September 14 2008, 12:13 PM BSTThe winner should be chosen by Simon and his team
They are judging who are going to be showcased - if they are judging the winners as well it might as well not be staged at all. Which would be a lot cheaper of course. And cut down on a lot of bickering.
The audience could vote on their favourite at each heat, and the one overall with the most votes gets into the final. All the others chosen by the professionals/judges.
That way the audience feel involved, but the whole thing isn't down to them.
Perhaps you could refuse to recognise the result?
Then hire teams of vicious clowns to drag people from thier homes and beat/murder them. Until you win the second round in a contest not recognised by the international community.
Then ban the BBC from the final, forcing poor Jeremy Bowen to arrive there in the boot of some one's car.
That was similee, this is pastiche.
Form can change when subject doesn't.
I was pastiching BBC reporting on the Lebanese election.
It wasn't even about Zimbabwe.
Egad I've inspired a Griff Image post I am doomed!
maybe they could video them and put them on the net for anyone to vote for the winner
The Sitcom Trials, as most of you will know, has a long and varied history of voting. When I first started the show, in 1999/2000, we gave the audiences forms on which they could write comments and crits of the sitcoms, some of which we read out on the night and some of which were posted online. This was a bit too focus-groupy and not very light-entertainingy, so I went for the simple voting slip.
From the 2001 Edinburgh show <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE298X-MSmY> onwards we settled on the formula of a voting slip which you punched a hole in or ripped, then the Pitch Fest (reading out audience suggestions for sitcoms) which covered up the time it took to count the votes, and finally the Cliffhanger, ie each sitcom ends in a cliffhanger and the audience only see the ending of the winner. The last part is the bit Declan and Simon have dispensed with for their productions of the Trials.
To return to the problem of the person with most mates getting most votes, there are a couple of methods we've used or considered. The first is having a number of head-to-head bouts in each evening. An old-style London or Bristol show would feature 6 sitcoms, giving you 3 winners per night. This slightly reduced the influence of weight-of-mates problem, but didn't totally eliminate it.
The second idea, which Steve Coogan would you believe suggested (yes, name drop name drop, back when Baby Cow were talking about getting us on TV, and you never know it could still happen) was a panel of judges. So you'd have a mix, like Strictly Come Dancing does, of audience votes and expert votes. You have to strike a balance by which the audience feels that their vote counts, and where the sensible judge can intervene to stop an unfair vote happening. And the devil is in the detail there, so I'm very glad it's Simon and Dec having to work out the formula and not me.
Of course there is a third way, the means by which the old-style Sitcom Trials used to avoid the Most Mates Standing problem, and that was that we would work with the same writers time and time again, and their mates would soon tire of coming. Why, some nights there was hardly anybody there, which made voting a doddle.
A fourth method has been suggested to me, which is live webcasting and live online voting. Personally I think that sounds like a horrendous effort, but I'm assured it can be done simply and cheaply. That would mean the people in the room wouldn't dominate, but then of course the writer with the most online friends would win instead. Oh god, there's no solution.
Glad to have been of no help whatsoever.
Kev F
sitcomtrials.co.uk
I actually like the Strictly Come Dancing method. (which they stole from Fame Academy) 
Have I just lost yet more cool points?
Quote: Griff @ September 14 2008, 8:53 PM BSTThe current system, of course, is the opposite: after a couple of years taking part in a contest they can't possibly win, you run the risk that it is the writers who will tire of coming. Although since there is an inexhaustible supply of sitcom writers in the world, maybe that is scientifically impossible.
We could take the view that everyone who takes part is a winner. Getting your work staged and seen is more than most sitcoms achieve. That was the origin of the Trials (and its non-competitive forerunner, Situations Vacant), to test out sitcom writing (primarily my own) in front of a live audience.
I introduced the voting and the Trials format to make the show more interactive, a more satisfyingly structured couple of hours, and to get over the fact that, then as now, some sitcoms go well and some don't. So, with the Trials, we're able to say "you're never more than 10* minutes away from something you might prefer", and "Have we found the new (whatever) - you decide".
The competition was originally incidental, just a means to an end. So, although we now have a tournament with a possible big prize, that shouldn't be the focus.