It's impossible to really appreciate the difference in overall quality between panorama performances that are separated by a mere one, two or three or four points, no matter how earnest the judges are. The final scores are so inherently unscientific in how they are assigned that no one can say with objective confidence that one performance, so separated by these tight scores, is qualitatively better or worse than the other. I think most would agree with that.
Perhaps a little tweaking of the scoring system might help, although would not solve the issue completely: How about the following suggestion:
In the Arrangement and General Performance categories (40 points max.), score each individual performance only in multiples of 5 ( i.e, 0, 5, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40)
In the Tone and Rhythm categories (10 points max.) , score each individual performance only in multiples of 2 ( i.e. 0, 2,4, 6, 8, 10).
This system would challenge the judge to make clearer and more definitive assessments of each performance.
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First of all, I think there should be a way to provide 'tie-breakers'. The 'ties' appear to be the norm, rather than the exception in this competition and quite possibly, using the point system that Lloyd has described, the ties could be eliminated.
Secondly, another problem that I've seen is that more often than not, the judges' comments do not match the score given. If the comments in any category read: 'Very good', then why would the accompanying score not match? We have to ask then, are the comments wrong, or is the score wrong?
Thirdly, perhaps the whole problem stems from undue collaboration - the favoritism and bias that are very blatant in the results that emerge. I recently attended the Young Kings competition at which the judges did not sit together. This set-up seemed to provide an extra layer of fairness in judging because it restricted the opportunity for collaboration. Surely something like this could be adopted for Panorama. It's certainly worth a try!
It's worth a try.