Prior to the last month, John Sergeant was best known perhaps for the pantomime moment when, standing outside the British Embassy in Paris, reporting on Mrs Thatcher's imminent demise as prime minister, he found himself unwittingly in the way of a flurry of activity as Thatcher emerged. It was the last time Sergeant was caught on the hop until asked to perform the paso doble.
"She's behind you!" would have been an appropriate warning again this week as Sergeant this time found himself on the receiving end of Arlene Phillips' admonishment over his poor performance on the popular entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing. Boo! Hiss! The voting public loved him so much they kept him in the show week after week, elevating his Les Dawson-like mediocrity over the marginally less mediocre acts. The "cruel" judges who lambasted his lambada suggesting he had, of all things, spent too much time reading the Guardian.
Sergeant, however, bowed out of the show gracefully, feeling it inappropriate to carry on and win the competition against "better dancers". "Strictlygate" was a rare moment of levity in what has become the "five-minute hate" of British television. It was all incredibly carefully stage-managed. Arlene's cod annoyance with the audience, Sergeant demurring (and relieved that he didn't have to cancel his holiday), BBC1 controller Jay Hunt almost combusting with self-congratulation at Sergeant's side during a "press conference" where he was grilled by Jeremy Paxman. At last, the BBC has understood how to turn interactivism to its advantage rather than its detriment. Sergeant's last lumpen circuit of the dance floor will perform extremely well when the ratings are published today.
Extrapolating more than mere panto and sequins from this inconsequential episode, it seems as if the development of interactivity, which now has audiences almost second-guessing the outcomes they can create, is an interesting challenge for broadcasters. John Sergeant, it turns out, was a stupendous piece of casting, and the public voted for him in huge numbers not just to see how progressively terrible he would be but also how this might exasperate the "experts".
The benefits of Strictlygate for the BBC - audience participation - are exactly the same forces which undid them on the issue of Russell Brand's non-compliant show. The interactive shows will increasingly become a dialogue between the producer and the audience rather than just a conduit for instant and sometimes slightly dodgy cash. The added benefit of red button interactivism for broadcasters is its ability to deliver instant market research on talent and format of shows.
Again, handled badly this can lead to an unravelling of editorial and creative priorities, but handled well it could start to produce a type of dialogue that transforms not just entertainment television but a whole range of other participative and social media. By ceding control to the audience, entertainment formats which by rights should be in similar decline to the rest of the schedule are now the wobbly keystones upon which the rest of the schedule resides.
In the early days of Big Brother, the producers were often scorned for suggesting that it held the seeds of a real change in democratic direction - reconnecting people with the idea of instant activity as a result of their vote, as opposed to the disconnection they feel from modern politics. This now looks as if it might be a prescient view rather than a pompously overstated aim for terrible telly. Although what the exit of John Sergeant from a reality show proves is that entertainment television is not a democracy but a dictatorship, albeit a spangly one.
