In answer to the post 2 down... indeed, the Top 10 was born from the end of voting for a favourite host, but the host needs to be somehow tied to a physical location which people can visit, and indeed most of those voting would not know how to find their favourite host in a list; therefore favourite venue is really the only option. And yes, I think it's pretty obvious that hosts in the Top 10 are mostly those who promote W2S to their singers.

And that's fine, because part of the reason to have the Top 10 is to appeal to hosts' competitive nature and encourage them to spread the word about W2S - thus our community builds and all hosts (particularly those in the Top 10) benefit.

I think we could have a National Favourite Karaoke Host Vote, but that this would be much as last time where there was a time period involved and a final announcement. By the way, the last winning host was Berns - voted for by a lot of singers, incidentally, not his employees and family.

You raise an interesting subject when you talk about my reviews of venues, and indeed I agree that they are particularly subjective. Rob Deal, talking on this subject a year or more ago said that he felt the reviews were a bit like tagging along with me on the night, and nothing more or less than my opinion. Indeed, you may have noticed that my very first reviews were short, focussed and factual.

I wonder why you think I wouldn't be qualified to discuss the business, managerial and operational aspects of a venue? I write for both singers and hosts, so that they may be informed whilst being entertained - and I see the results in the way that both parties now discuss aspects of karaoke that were, in the first year or so of W2S - disregarded.

As you'll have seen from the recent Karaoke Travels, and will see again in the forthcoming new eposides, I'm now moving even further from a sole karaoke focus into a broader format where karaoke is not even reviewed in several stories. And I do carefully monitor the readership statistics to determine what people like to read.

But to ensure that I've answered your second paragraph fully, my 'angle' for reviewing a particular venue is based on my decision about how the travelling singer would visit it. If it's remote, I consider the travel; if it's a large venue, I consider the general layout and other entertainment options; if it's a rural area, I consider why a singer might wish to travel here, and if it's in a city I am generally more focussed on the karaoke and the personalities of singers. I agree that the subjectivity of my reviews, and that I often visit just once, makes them less an indication of a gig's true nature than singers' comments - and it's for that reason that the reviews are less evidently attached to gigs in the Gig Listings than are singers' comments.
Submitted by David on 19-12-2006

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