Phone Polls

[Uzoma]

Is there any benefit to these phone polls that ask questions which require yes or no and cost quite a bit? What's the point?

[MikeMikeMike]

No, there is no point and they achieve nothing other than making the programmes (?programs? -I can never remember which way round it is) money. It's not even as if they give an accurate opinion, since the questions or the programmes are often loaded. For example, a question like 'should immigration laws be tightened?' will follow a report suggesting that they take our jobs and clog up the health service or some other such nonsense. People who think 'yes' are necessarily going to be more passionate about it because they want something changed, and so are more likely to phone in. So you get a totally biased result at which the presenters nod meaningfully, and say' many the government should take note of THAT!' It's ridiculously easy to predict the results of nearly all of such surveys because they might as well be fixed. Try it, you see what I mean. But surely if the question is being asked it suggests that the answer is not so clear cut that 95% of the public are in full agreement. Find something soft which makes a lot of noise and throw it at your tv in impotent rage.

[tomd]

I think this could be backed up by the way Channel 5 have one every half hour news programme whereas the BBC don't seem to run them.