Garry...
With regards to the change in competition format, I thought I'd suggest an adaptation of what Karaoke Time do with their comps.
Their format is several singers chosen week to week to compete in semi finals. Half from each semi compete against each other in an elimination final. For each of these finals, singers get one warm up song and one comp song.
Then, half from the elimination final proceed to the grand final where they get to sing 2 comp songs.
They have different judges for each final and thus, if a singer wants to sing the same songs throughout the finals, they can.
My adaptation would be to choose less singers per heat and have them sing more songs per final. I think it should also be stipulated that they must choose DIFFERENT songs throughout the competition. Singing song(s) from their heat is fine but from semi to elimination to grand final, different songs ought to be chosen. Tougher yes but consider all the comp chasers out there with their 3 to 6 song repertoire. If they were allowed to sing the same songs and only 1 or 2 per final, they could easily stand a chance of beating the locals or those who don't practise the same songs over and over like many chasers definitely do. With more songs per final and the specification that they must be different each round, the locals would have the playing field made that much more level as suddenly, consistency becomes a factor. The regular, amateur punter who sings pretty much the same all the way through is bound to lose less fans than the chaser who suffers a huge change in quality when forced to switch from their 'old faithfuls' to new material.
I believe there is also an audience choice award at Karaoke Time's grand final but I don't know what they get or if the same singer can win a place AND the audience choice. I guess simplest way would be to have the audience vote on their choice of the remaining singers after the main prizes have been allocated.
The only issue I see is perhaps the time factor several weeks of comp finals would take up so the warm up round should definitely be included so regular punters have a chance to sing early in the night. I guess something like Chatty's grand final format should be applied to the semi's and elimination final. Just a thought. After all, 4 finals (2 semis, 1 elimination and 1 grand) would likely bring in good crowds for 4 weeks in a row as opposed to just going from heats to a grand final...

Incidentally, I got through to the semi finals at Matraville Hotel the other night and look forward to my semi-final.
Was going to head to another comp on the Friday night but was just too exhausted.
So, tonight (Saturday), I'll be headed to Redfern RSL most likely. Been there once before many moons ago and found out the hard way about the different versions of songs out there when I took a chance on a Tom Jones number that proved to be 4 keys higher than expected. That wasn't nice... :(
Submitted by Johnny B on 20-04-2007

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