According to reports (i.e. someone posting on a forum) on Digital Spy, the next run of The Million Pound Drop – Live will be from Wednesday 15th December to Saturday 18th at the interesting time of 8pm, a timeslot that will probably give it two hundred million thousand viewers until the Endemol Question Writing Cretins come up with a question like “what day is Christmas? Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday” and then everyone on the internet complains because actually most of those answers are right because it doesn’t ask for which year and then the show gets axed.
Then The Million Dollar (Money) Drop starts on Fox in the US the following week.
Meanwhile, here is an interesting interview with David Flynn regarding The Money Drop
Edit: sorry, Twitter link was fine earlier, subscribers only now it appears.
Can’t read it as it’s for subscribers only.
Oh that’s interesting, the Twitter link was fine earlier.
8pm is a crap slot for the show. Also as it being live it will actually be on tape delay. Million Pound Drop Nearly Live more like. I’d bet it will get slaughtered on Thursday and Friday against the soaps, with Wednesday having a decent but less than average rating. Digiguide hasn’t confirmed the Saturday start time but it would be suicidal if they schedule it against the final of Strictly Come Dancing.
The Million Pound Drop will do fine at 8pm. People who watch the MPD are mostly aged between 18-49, which is the opposite of shows like Emmerdale and Coronation Street which have audiences mostly aged over 50. It’s good scheduling.
Looking at the provisional schedules: Wednesday is up against a probably-meaningless Liverpool football match and A Touch of Frost. Thursday competes with the Royal Variety Performance and Emercorrie. Friday has The Eastenders, Corrie, and QI (but not Mastermind). Saturday’s show appears to be going out at 9.30, HIGNFY territory.
It will be interesting to see if the programme can maintain its two-and-a-bit million ratings, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
And – 8pm means I’ll be able to watch it without looking at the clock, working out in the breaks, how much sleep I’ll have from that point before the alarm rudely interupts my sleep for that night.
Hats off to Channel 4, for going fishing for a new audience for the show. Hope as Brig says, the questions are checked and double checked for accuracy. If, the show will be taped and show in slight delay – I wonder if that will cut out that occasional gripe with the live shows, and allows a stop in recording and check out the facts against the answer on shouty McCalls cards.
Still think Channel 4 should consider a 9pm slot for it next year during the summer though – 3 series of 2 weeks with a 3-4 week break inbetween them.
Also, won’t the Saturday evening show really split the posters on this site?
It’s the last Schalg Den Raab of the year that night!
I largely predict that won’t affect MPD’s audience too-o-o much.
:o)
Agreed – particually if we have the protracted ‘stream feed chase’ I’ve had to put up at various times during the recent Schlag Den Star series!
Millionaire started out a 7pm in it’s very first slot – it must have come against Eastenders at some point during it’s first week – so given the correct amount of word of mouth, and trailing momentum it may not give Million Pound Drop too much trouble.
(goes back and checks)
Yep, Millionaire and The Eastenders went head-to-head on Monday 7 September 1998. Millionaire had just under 9 million viewers [1], its lowest of the week. For ratings purposes, the BBC show is aggregated with its Sunday repeat, but I reckon it was down by over a million from the surrounding weeks.
[1] Audience figures from this era are not directly comparable with contemporary numbers.
Actually Millionaire first started at 8pm but back in 1998 there was no Eastenders on a Friday night. It was still a thrice weekly show (Mon/Tue/Thr). A repeat of Fawlty Towers was up against the first show.
That said, I seem to recall Peter Lee’s £500K win (first person to do so) in January 2000 was up against Eastenders that night since it was aired at 7.30pm.
Tom Scott Against the World did effect something as the final episode of Million Pound Drop failed to enter Channel 4’s Top 30 shows for that week. Whose to say Eurovision invader Stefan Raab could do the same? 😉
Yes, but that was Internet Personality Tom Bloody Scott.
(Thanks Tom, I would like £25 for this.)
Is the title for this post the theme tune from Speed?!
Want to see Dick & Dom’s new CBBC show?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/shows/shows/dick_and_dom
and it looks like Pointless is aiming for a Spring run for their fourth series.
http://www.applausestore.com/applausestore-book-show.php?id=275&bid=1
CBBC and the minimum age is 18? Not sure if I get.
I’ve not seen a show in so long I might go and see Pointless.
It was worth a shot at 9pm but 8pm will be rubbish. Not just tougher competition, but also pre-watershed live shows nowadays tend to be on a delay – and the show risks losing the energy it gets from being 100% live as C4/Endemol will probably be so shit scarred someone will react in the most natural way to losing shedloads of cash they’ll enforce a delay.
Channel 4 are burning off the unaired Iron Chef UKs at lunchtimes from 6 December.
That’s around 6-8 hours later than I thought they’d put the rest of the run out at..
I thought they would bury them in the middle of the night, or mid-mornings on More4.
Odd thing is, I’ve been watching an Thanksgiving episode on Food Channel this afternoon, and the US version had that hint of irony and self-knowing hyperbole that the UK version was very obviously missing – and as a result was far more watchable, than ours which was mostly made up of Ollie Smith shouting and pulling odd faces, and Nick Nairn wondering what he said to his agent in the past to land him in that load of tripe.
I know today’s Weakest Link was a repeat – but just £750 was won on it.
If I’m right in thinking, that equals the record for the lowest prize fund ever.
And I apologise if I may be giving the impression that I’m looking for attention here – but I still can’t believe no-one has responded yet to the OC question I set in the “Junior Eurovision” post…