Appy Days

Simon Cowell's approach to continuing series is that each year must be bigger and better in some way - and it's probably the app what won it this year for Britain's Got Talent.

We are usually told the percentage of votes cast for each act (the dogs got 22.6%) but  I can find no previous example of BGT revealing the actual number of votes. This year Ant and Dec beamed that there were 4.5m.

The BGT app was free to download from both Android and iTunes for the first time this year. It gives each device five votes per voting period - but you have to watch an ad, and click to clear, after the first vote to get to the remaining four. Each downloaded app can have six mobile devices associated with it. The user's only outlay is via their existing data plans.

The app stands at Number 1 in this week's list of UK Android downloads, with a spread of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 in total. It's at Number 11 in the current iTunes chart.

Standard phone votes and short code mobile calls cost a minimum of 50p each, with 15p going to The Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund.

PS Anyone notice that the prize money for the winner actually went down this year, from £500,000 to £250,000 ?