Doubtless you’ve noticed that late nights on ITV have a new look. A new teleshopping look with a two hour block called The Zone. The Zone is a series of three or four ‘blocks’ linked together by Michael Underwood and Angelica Bell, or Nigel Mitchell off of Quizmania and Zoe Hardman off of the awesome Playing it Straight selling holidays. Half of these blocks are live simulcasts with QVC, which I’ve always liked because I love live broadcasting like that. Another block is a simulcast with Challenge Jackpot’s Roulette Nation.
But it’s the other thing I want to talk about, Challenge Jackpot’s Bingo Stars which is my favourite segment of the block for entirely the wrong reasons.
It’s basically keno. You pick five numbers from 80, ten are drawn, the more you match the more you win. You can stake up to £10 per line.
Here is a very rough guide to the odds and returns:
| Matched | Rough Odds | Return |
| 1 | 5 to 2 | Stake returned |
| 2 | 9 to 1 | 1 to 1 |
| 3 | 81 to 1 | 9 to 1 |
| 4 | 1635 to 1 | 99 to 1 |
| 5 | 95,400 to 1 | 9999 to 1 |
As doubtless you’ve noticed, the house has a bit of an edge here and traditionally keno is the game that favours the casino the most.
But the thing with what is essentially a lottery is that the poor returns are mitigated by the fact that the big prizes are very very big. It’s the glamour of the gamble and what could be more glamourous that winning lifechanging sums on late night TV? Let’s take a look at a winners list:
Oh.
I’m not sure what the best part of this post is – I think I’ll settle for the second tag. 😀
I can’t work out why you like blocks of simlcasting like the ITV/QVC overnight hawkers alley of the airwaves?
There has to be an argument to say that a broadcaster as large as ITV1 should not be doing stuff like this at the expense of showing it’s own original output (or a repeat of original output) – and should we be worried that there is now an ITV/QVC link-up?
How long before ‘ITV5 quid-plus-£9.20-p&p-per-item’ hits our epg’s?
No no no, I like QVC as a channel, I fully agree that I’d prefer ‘proper’ programming.
Nearly 89% return – still quite better than lottery, eh.
French news – Qui veut Gagner des Millions (WWTBAM) returns monday on TF1 – strangely on the 6.15 PM “death” timeslot (crushed since some years by Come Dine With Me on rival channel M6) , remplacing A Prendre Ou A Laisser (which should be definitively axed this time.) – they also removed the phone call selection in favor of a casting (sigh) … and i’m afraid ratings and winnings are quite likely to be low.
They said APOAL was cancelled this time because people weren’t gambling enough due to the financial crisis, yes?
I remember thinking at the time this was a sign Endemol would become really overt about encouraging gambling on the UK show as well… from what I understand, nothing’s really changed in that regard for us…
The timeslot also got crushed by Celebrity Farm…
Obviously we’re far from having our first Millionaire since 2004, or even seeing questions 11 or 12… PLUS we have the crappiest thing they ever done on a show like this, because now it’s “Who wants to be half a millionaire?” : The new home-viewer game selects a winner for each contestant on the hotseat, and they split his winnings 50/50. Now the show is pretty low budget, not really exciting, and that’s not with that kind of changes they’ll gain viewers, trust me. APOAL did that too, and then? Axed…
Isn’t that 50/50 split exactly what happened on APOAL?
And nearly every TF1 GS since APOAL – prize split between contestant/home viewer – unless it can’t reasonably done because of contestants winning non cash prizes on the way (Wheel, Le Juste Prix)
Unless they radically change the money tree – yup, prizes will go down . Well , it was quite generous before with the second safe heaven for 48,000€ … if they wanted to save money , they’d rather go with a money tree more like the German one (500€/16,000€ safe levels – 16k€ removed if you take the fourth lifeline)
As for the cancel reason – the “people not gambling” issue was the reason for last year -this year, it’s more a matter of seriously low ratings – a rumors says that tapings were stopped early , with no explaination given to the contestants.
Well, after watching again the latest APOAL episode aired , there was an Arthur voiceover edit added during the end stating that was the end of the current session, and that “they will come back very soon”.
I feel bad for the overseas contestant that that arrived on the last episode – quite a bad timing. Also, the serious lack of 100K€ big winners didn’t helped – i think there was only one or two during this run … which is not really good considering the 75/100/150/200/250/500K board. (or not , after all – there was only 37 episodes this year.)
Thing of the day: Sakis Rouvas, Greek 2004/9 Eurovision entrant, was on Fort Boyard in 2002. I did not know that.
By the looks of it, The Zone is almost as close to an actual return to late nights on ITV1 in 2006 and 2007 (excluding UTV, where Brain Box has been on for nearly a year now) as is possible.
Similar presenters, some similarities in the block’s concept, and much derision on the Digital Spy forums.
(Bingo Night Live is less close as it was much more refined presentation-wise, and each episode lasted only one hour.)
I had a glance at it recently, and I’m sorry to say, I prefer Brain Box. AFAIK, this has kept away from serious trouble so far – plus it’s got the lovely Carmel and the even lovelier Danielle off Price Drop TV.
What’s more, ‘The Zone’ isn’t all that original a title – there was a PIQ of the same name in the final days of ITV Play:
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/The_Zone