Christmas TV 2018

Odd ending. Did they have to have the winner battling for screen time with George Ezra? Took the focus off Geraint Thomas.

The BBC are running 12 minutes late. I know, let's run 3 minutes of trailers!

Clueless.

They've got the audience captive and waiting. So why not run some trailers?

Because I haven't tuned in to watch some self indugent crap. I've tuned in to watch the Apprentice final.

Apart from that they could have gained 3 minutes on the rest of the evening's schedule.

SPOTY always runs over 10 mins, I wouldn’t be surprised if the off air time on the script was 21:10. It’s all a charade to ensure they can get a big audience for the winners announcement.

Just a shame the winner announcement was sham.. especial how there have cut the short list.

Same difference.

All night it's been said the winner would be announced at 9pm, as it is every year.

And yet every year it still overruns! Wouldn't it hurt the schedulers to schedule accordingly (i,e start The Apprentice Final at 9:10pm) or is that too much to ask of them?!

I was surprised that the shortlist, when it was revealed, had only six names.

I was very surprised when Harry Kane didn't finish in the top two for the main award (the second year running that the bookies' favourite hasn't won or finished second), and when the netballers won the Team and Greatest Moment awards.

And I was very, *very* surprised when the classic theme wasn't played at *any* point in the show, for the first time since... well, presumably since it was introduced. (Does anyone know when that was, out of interest? AFAIK, it doesn't *quite* go all the way back to the inaugural event in 1954 - but it definitely goes back a very long time.)

I am sure that there were good reasons for all of this, though.

As Andrew says, it's all a charade to ensure they get a big audience for the announcement of the winner.

In other words, they *deliberately* let it overrun.

Mind you, I do still prefer the days when the event was called the Sports *Review* of the Year and it featured the Funnies - in more or less the slot occupied today by the In Memoriam segment.



(I'm absolutely in favour of remembering the sportspeople who left us over the past year - but there *are* still out-takes and other lighter moments in the broadcasting of sport, are there not?)

SPOTY was a poor broadcast by the Beeb. Cutting off Billy Monger was a very crass error, the Three Lions performance was embarassing and whoever thought of ending the broadcast with George Ezra singing rather than focussing on the SPOTY winner like they do every other year has some explaining to do.

Why did they cut the shortlist to six too this year - especially since it's been nearly double that in past years.
Have they revealed the voting figures yet either - can't find them on the Beeb website yet?