Basically: The X Factor is on. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t really weatch it veryu religiously at all. Despite that, Fantasy X Factor soon! And less than a month until the next Schlag den Raab! The last one feels like such a long time ago.
- 6:10pm BBC1 – 101 Ways to Leave a Gameslow
- 6:45pm ITV1 – Odd One In
- 7:10pm BBC1 – Tonight’s The Night
- 7:30pm ITV1 – The X Factor *makes the international arm symbol of the “X”*, The Xtra Factor with Konnie Huq (I predict she’ll be no Holly Willoughby) follows at 9pm on ITV2. Bad luck Magic Numbers.
- 9pm ITV1 – Magic Numbers (guests apparently include Alexandra Burke, Pamela Anderson and some people off of Britain’s Got Talent. And what odds can I have that the Xs in the end game will be coloured like the X Factor X, cross promotion and all that?)
If anybody can watch German TV on satellite or via a naughty feed this evening you can watch.
RTL – 7.15-9.15pm: The X Factor
Pro7 – 7.15-9.05pm: Solitary 1.0
Pro7 – 9.05-10.05pm: Elton Vs Simon: The Show*
*Elton (Stefan Raab’s apprentice) Vs Simon is based on the Canadian show Kenny Vs Spenny but Elton Vs Simon is done in front of a stuido audience.
One piece of news. As Perfecton will be re-recording all 30 shows in September (four recordings a day). BBC Two have brought forward Pointless and will begin airing their ten week run from Monday 6th September.
Seems Cowell has sabotaged Magic Numbers by holding Peter Dickson hostage!
ITV is a disgrace. They are autotuning the X Factor performances and misleading viewers. After the phone-in scandals, I thought they’d get their act together. But they’re conning viewers yet again.
I was going to say it sounded auto-tuney.
Don’t understand what auto-tune means – any chance you could explain what’s going on, and why you feel it’s a con?
Auto-tune is an audio process that producers apply on vocals to perfectly match the singer’s pitch to the backing track, getting rid of any duff notes. Basically how Cher sounds on Believe back in 1998. And for some reason it’s now considered all cool and brand-new, when in reality it’s completely lazy and personally I think it’s cheapened the entire music industry.
As for why it’s a con? Well, you’re not truly hearing the singer, you’re hearing an artificially-perfect version of the singer.
Thanks Alex, very interesting. Since I asked the question, I spotted a GMTV piece this morning on said box of tricks, in which Carrie Grant gave a demonstration of how it works. The item featured a ‘statement from X Factor bosses’, who claim the judges were listening to the contestants’ actual voices, and the auto-tuning was applied in post-production.
The question remains: WHY? I don’t buy the argument about enhancing our viewing – this is one programme where viewers actually want to hear exactly what the singers sound like! The inescapable conclusion is that it’s been just another way of stirring up deliberate controversy.
ok, here is my question. Almost all game shows on childrens tv have whimsical story line to them (see mission 2110 robots have taken over earth, ravens an ancient transforming warlock, rebooted bamzooki is ‘street orginisation.’
so it set me thinking, when was the last adult show to have such a whimsical story, and why dont more? The most recent primetime gameshow ‘whimsy’ i think is ice warriors, and previously to that, scavengers (this is disregarding fort boyard, i dont accept a man owns a fort and invites people to play games there as a sufficient story line!)
And i suppose almost in answer of my own question, the reason there arent more is because they arent producing adventure sort game shows for dults at the moment, but anyway, discuss…
What a good question! This might be a good categorization of game shows for UKGS.C that (*checks*) isn’t actually used at the moment, other than through the Fictional Characters category. I think there is an extent to which this is a grey scale; one definite contender is The Murder Game, though at another level you could almost make a weak case for Deal Or No Deal.
As for why these are out of fashion… partly the old “picture books of horses” saw applies; there aren’t many picture books of horses made because potential purchases have to like purchasing both (a) picture books and (b) horses in order to want to buy the book, which cuts down on your target market in two ways rather than one. By analogy, a higher-age fantasy, or at least narrative, game show would only appeal to both (a) those who like game shows and (b) those who like narrative.
Furthermore, there isn’t a great deal of speculative fiction drama around these days, presumed to be for budgetary reasons, and much of the highest-profile material that exists tends to be aimed at a family audience, crossing over to appeal to all ages (Doctor Who, Merlin, Sherlock…) Performing the same trick with a game show requires, well, the next The Crystal Maze – which is what your usual suspects tried to be and, sadly, didn’t really achieve.
6-0 to Magic Numbers. They might as well make it a clean sweep come the final show next week.
Have there been any male phone in contestants for Magic Numbers?!
And I think I have Barrowman fever I left BBC1 on for a moment after another episode of 101 Ways To Recycle The Same 5 Exits By Giving Them A New Name and now I keep whistling the ‘Tonight’s The Night’ theme tune. Strange.
The people who do the adjudication for Magic Numbers are on Twitter, I might ask them about the male/female thing.
And the adjudicators’ response is:
“the players on Magic Numbers are randomly generated – so, yes, it is a coincidence.”
So there you are.
Would that be the same random generator that put 9 female callers to 1 male caller each week on The Vault, by any chance?
I only just caught Magic Numbers. Worst Show of 2010 by a country mile. Listening to an audio track of somebody winning a jackpot, drowning it out with audience noise and not even letting them sign off is NOT entertainment. Give any other game show a six figure sum of money to play with and at least you can manufacture all sorts of exciting facial reactions. This is just a pointless waste of perfectly good ad revenue.
That’s why I’ve said it’s 6-0. Not a single male has been chosen.
Could it at least be possible that women are significantly more likely to call in to these sorts of shows than men? Genders might watch in equal amounts (or they might not, which could also influence these sorts of things), but might men have a more cynical outlook on the whole thing so they wouldn’t even try, or some other mindset that prevents them from calling in?
I have no problem considering the possibility that six women might be picked in a row, especially if they’re more likely to be called in.
Congratulations to the Internet’s Tom Scott whose website was mentioned in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s National Newspaper!
Tom if you drop me an email (I believe you have my addy, but let me know otherwise) I will happily send your article over to you.
Well played!
STv have raided their archives and put this up:
http://www.youtube.com/stventsandcomedy
Wow, cheers Barry, I’ll put a seperate post up for that I think.
How to see last Saturday’s 101 Ways to Leave a Game Show in a quarter of the show’s airtime.
http://buzzerblog.flashgameshows.com/101-ways-in-under-15-minutes/
I watched this, and I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Surely there’s a way to cut it down to seven minutes?” (The Emergency Exit round is probably the only thing keeping it from being able to be cut down to about four minutes.)