It is interesting that you and many others seem to comfortably group skaters into two categories - the big jumpers and the "artistic" skaters.
No, I used two examples because you had initially been talking about Abbott vs. Joubert at NHK in those terms. Although I was thinking that Plushenko would often fit the description of the second skater just as well.
But there can be a lot more than two kinds of skaters and a lot more than two different ways that skills can be mixed.
For example:
Skater A has big jumps, most of them solid but one problem takeoff that he often flubs or doubles. Average spins with decent but not special positions. Good carriage and pretty good extension. Brilliant choreography that tells a story and portrays a character, occasionally relying on posing and acting directly for the audience but mostly using skating skills in time with the music. Good charisma and audience connection. Very good expression of musical nuances. Complex, varied, intricate transitions and connecting skating throughout, with solid edges and difficult steps and turns as well as highlight moves.
Skater B is a solid technical skater with huge jumps and fast spins. The most difficult jump content in the field, delivered cleanly. Decent basic skating, pretty good connection to the music and the audience, not-so-great carriage and extension. Some originality in program style and transitional moves, but also a lot of slow skating and posing in place to execute the thematic choreography. Step sequences emphasize quickness at the expense of edges.
Skater C is fast and solid but a bit stiff. Good carriage and line but not much flexibility. High jumps, not quite as much distance in the air on the triple axel as the previous two, with good difficulty, but when a jump starts to go wrong he usually crashes hard. Pretty good use of edge work and gets all the obvious phrasing of the music. Weak spins.
Skater D is very refined with pure, effortless edges and excellent carriage and extension. Great use of musical nuances and transitions. Somewhat smaller jumps, with very clean edges, but a tendency to double out. Beautiful spin positions, good speed and centering. Exquisite introverted performance, connected to the music and the ice, not the audience.
Skater E is another fast skater with big jumps. Sloppy air positions, and sloppy spin positions (although some of them are innovative). Good speed through moderately step sequence that goes well with the music. A few creative highlight transitions that are either easy or rely more on athleticism than skating technique. Otherwise a lot of basic crossovers between the elements, with poor posture and not-great edge quality. Innovative program concepts that depict a character and tell a story. Great charisma and crowd connection.
B and C would both fall on the "athlete" side of an artist/athlete dichotomy, but their strengths and weaknesses are very different from each other's. A and D would be classified as artists, but again they have different artistic as well as different technical strengths. E is certainly athletic -- is he also artistic? Everything that D does so well, E is horrible at. But E is also quite good at some of the same artistic skills that make A great.
Lots of different pluses and minuses to balance even before taking into account which jumps they actually land or how many mistakes they make the day of each competition.
What this would would sacrifice, though, is the opportunity to use big jumps and amazing spins to punctuate musical highlights.
That opportunity would come in the Well-Balanced Program event, which would be the final round of a combined event or the most prestigious separate event.
In the Skating Skills/Interpretation program, "big" jumps like spit jumps or delayed axels would be options to punctuate musical highlights.
We wouldn't want to see a ballet with no lifts, then a separate lifting contest -- judged by how much poundage the man could hoist over his head.
Well, a ballet is not a sporting contest. If you want to see a ballet on ice, go to a show. Where each program can include exactly whatever spins or jumps or lifts etc. best fit the music and the theme of the program, with no worries about scores or rules. Some concepts, some musical choices, might call for eight triple toe loops in quick succession. Others might demand no jumps at all. Let the form dictate content.
If you want to see a competitive program that integrates all the different kinds of technical skills to music, with
maybe a coherent artistic point to it as a bonus, that's what the Well-Balanced Program competition is for.
Thanks Buttercup! It is so pointless to talk about how a program would have scored under 6.0 or what the results would have been. Programs would have a different look and because 6.0 was so subjective there is no way that a person can say that a program would have scored a 5.8 or 5.7. 
make mine a quadruple
). Meanwhile Buttle got a first place vote not only from the Canadian judge 
