Alright, nothing much seems to be doing, although beind the scenes it’s quite exciting as we’re hopefully doing an interview with some Wild Rover peeps soon (if you have any questions, let me know. No guarantees they’ll be used).
And look! No more than 18 months after me suggesting there should be an iThing Only Connect app lo and behold there’s one coming in August. It sounds like it’s going to be very similar to the Connecting Wall game on the website, except it will cost about £2 for 20 walls. I can’t help but think they might be undercutting themselves somewhere, especially when PuzzGrid works and is free and unlikely to run into copyright problems.
Anyway as it’s quiet I’ve been meaning to put this up for a while. It’s time to watch the master at work, Robert Kilroy-Silk hosting four-episodes-and-done Shafted.
There’s a part two as well with the actual prisoner’s dilemma element. It’s interesting to think this show bombed in 2004 2001, and just five eight years later was basically successful with extra shouting as Goldenballs. The half question thing actually turned up as one of the special possible conditions imposed on the evidentally not picked up Control recently.
As both a DOND and Big Brother fan, interesting news about an appointment for the new series of BB
http://www.bbspy.co.uk/0520/news/c5/former-dond-exec-joins-big-brother-team
This seems to be a good thing but there’s something niggling in the back of my mind.
At the risk of beating the unused pilot dead horse (UPDH), US pilot Twisters used the half-question gimmick. And shuffleboard!
We TOTALLY need a shuffleboard-based gameshow.
Thanks for this, will watch later.
Ooh, I remember seeing Twisters, and I rather liked the look of it. It’s odd how pilots like Twisters and King of the Hill don’t make the cut, yet real dreck like Crash Course does.
Better, curling.
FORMAT IDEA: Curly-Qs
Two teams of professional curlers face off. Teams are asked questions alternately. A correct answer lets the team slide a stone. Once per round (at a random time), the teams play a “Slippery Question” on the buzzer, where they can remove an opponent’s stone from the playing area. Score like normal curling, but points are converted to cash. $100/point in round one, $250 in round two, $1000 in round three. Winners play the bonus round, where winners play five stones that have wine glasses mounted on top. The team’s bank is doubled for every stone that makes it into the target area (tripled if a merlot is closer than a pinot grigio, quadrupled for a pair of reislings), but the stones may not bump, as any spilled wine means they lose everything. INCREDIBLE JEOPARDY! AND SHUFFLEBOARD-LIKE ELEMENTS!
Commission x 6
Well, isn’t that something. A question about Pokémon! Last time I saw one of those was on Only Connect in 2010.
http://twitpic.com/332jj8
Anyone else know of any quizzes with a question about Pokémon?
Can we count various Pokemon quizzes on SMTV Live?
There was a question about Pikachu on Downfall. Amazingly, the contestant missed it.
I think I heard one on The Weakest Link and/or The Chase aaages ago. Answered wrongly of course, because the contestants aren’t ‘down wi’ da kidz’, or something.
Not technically a ‘quiz’ per se, but there was a Pokemon-themed task on The Moment of Truth where a woman had to memorise the first 150 Pokemon and recall a number of them by their pictures alone.
Which is kind of amusing really, seeing as both Pokémon and The Moment of Truth (as the Happy Family Plan) originated from Japan.
That egypt themed videogame gameshow with Trev and Simon on [.TV] had a hideously mispronounced question involving squirtle (Similarly hideous to Robert Kilroy Silk’s pronouncing of Charizard)
http://www.wild-rover.com/?post_type=programmes&p=356
Also, talking about Wild Rover, this sounds exactly like the sort of thing I’d love.
*jawdrop* Sounds pretty amazing, but I wonder if they screen-tested Dave Gorman for it as well?
Part of me wants to say “Practical mathematics? Applied mathematics was bad enough” and part of me wonders whether the “Komaneci” in the original show’s title was an allusion to Nadia somehow.
Apparently the latter. Also, the “better than nothing” department suggests you consider applying your favourite web-based translator over this Wikipedia page; there’s probably a very good cultural reason why the show is broadcast at just after 1am but I’m not clear what it might be. (Then again, that’s prime time for poker shows, and several weeks that’s been the highlight of my week’s viewing.)
I love how that article assumes there’s a 25th and 26th hour in the 24-hour clock.
In TV scheduling, it is frequently the case to treat midnight as 24:00, 1am as 25:00 and so on. This is to avoid confusion when (e.g.) a programme late night on Wednesday is treated as a Wednesday listing rather than a Thursday early morning listing.
I’ve been scheduling for nearly 3 years now – the 26 hour day is still the most ridiculously confusing but unfortunately necessary aspect to my job. That and the Ofcom code obviously.
How does it work when the clocks change an hour?
Everyone in the office looks a bit bemused then someone has the bright idea to look up what happened last year. I’ve no idea how sales cope with the extra hour – although there are proportionally more or less breaks respectively, on these days. We build either a 23 or 25 hour day (and ignore the errors it throws up) and change the bill times of the programmes at the last minute to reflect the actual times of tx.
There’s some further details of the format here:
http://old.lms.ac.uk/newsletter/395/395_10.html#3
A BBC4 pilot, apparently.
My heart flutters already. I’d be inclined to say “one and done” if it weren’t for the fact that the Japanese original has had the material for so many episodes.
My heart flutters already, even though this will probably be slightly less of a game show than, say, QI; we can but hope that at least the singleton gets shown somewhere someday, or even just gets put somewhere on t’Internet, even if the whole thing doesn’t get picked up for a run.
Wasn’t this discussed at the time? I remember hearing about it and thinking it sounded like Never Mind The Full Stops: Maths Edition. Anyway, even if it was any good, BBC Four would mess it up by… well, putting it on BBC Four. Always a bad move, that.
With the greatest of respect: .14159265 to you!
If it’s good enough for Only Connect, it ought to be good enough for any similarly bright, funny show.
Seems like it was piloted in 2009, so I don’t think it’ll see the light of day.
BBC Four won’t be doing any new entertainment in the current BBC Trust climate, I fear. Strange, given the success they’ve had with it.
2001, Brig! Shafted is nearly ten years old.
Yes I wondered that, but I was sure it said 2004 on UKGS.c although I might have misread it.
France 3, who’ve recently piloted Pointless of course, are trying out another show – an Israeli format called ‘Upgrade’, where people have a presenter turn up on their doorstep and ask them questions in return for a free house renovation. If they slip up, though, they apparently lose some of the possessions they already own.
Strange.
Sounds like a new spin on the 90s Daz adverts Danny Baker & Shane Ritchie once did.
Danny and Shane didn’t leave people’s houses with the family telly under their arm though, did they?
The premise is an intriguing one, but I wonder about novelty factor fading fast.
Something like this was done ages ago on Ram FM, the Derby radio station. Called “Heads You Win, Tails You Lose”, premise was basically the same but replacing the questions with a coin flip.
I’ve had a format with that title in my head for years and I couldn’t work out the game for it.
In my version, the prize would be upgraded throughout the show – so you’d start with a broken pencil, which gets upgraded to a stationery set, which gets upgraded to an office desk which… etc.
It’s been five years since one red paperclip, so you could just do that as a very slow game, one trade per week. Give it another ten years or so for people to have forgotten about the inspiration.
To be honest, I think Millionaire’s very visual money tree has somewhat beaten the world to it, even noting that the likes of the $64,000 Question had money trees even if they weren’t so explicitly visual about it (obv., considering things like radio heritage making things impossible). I’m not sure how this wouldn’t come across as just another money tree, except with prizes replacing the money sums. (Not that that’s a bad thing!)
Compare, I suppose, with the Big Breakfast’s Who Wants To Win A Mini On Air?, with a five-question prize tree involving parts of a car, going up to the whole car as the top prize.
This idea predates ORPc: it was mainly inspired by the habit of increasingly many services offering upgrades – including cinema seats, of all things.
So, basically taking the concept of a prize tree to actual prizes rather than cash? BBC3 would be the most likely place for that to work, I’d imagine. Start with a broken pencil, and upgrade to, say, ‘handfeeding live tigers’ or a similarly Cheap For BBC, Impossible For General Public thing.
With how often Noel Edmonds says that nobody’s ever gone at the first offer, it got me wondering; on any version of Deal or No Deal in the world, has anybody ever gone at the first offer?
I’ve no idea but I’d be very, very surprised if the answer was yes.
surprised if the answer is yes? i’d be surprised if it wasnt yes! somewhere in the world, at some point, SOMEONE must have said yes at the first oppurtunity?! surely?
I suppose it’s possible but a quick look on google doesn’t bring anything up and I’d imagine if it had happened, it would be on Youtube.
I doubt anyone would ever go at the first offer. Even if the 5 lowest amounts were taken out, in order, the offer for the UK show would still hover around £10,000 – £15,000 (contestant background dependent).
Plus, I suspect the banker would also in the phone call apply the mental thumbscrews by saying that he will double the first offer if, in the second round the 5 highest amounts remain untouched.
If it ever happened, the offer would play a small part in the deal, but I suspect that players nerves would also be part of accepting the offer.
On another level – how would Endemol pad out the rest of the 50 minutes of air-time. Select another contestant?
But the reductio ad absurdum argument is that if noone ever walks at the first offer, why isn’t the first round simply 8 boxes long?
I’d say that sometimes it takes them longer to open the boxes after the deal than before, but one of the reasons why I think the 1 hour shows are overegging it somewhat is that it completely reduces the possibility of a first offer deal to 0%.
Surely the entire interest of DoND is to see where the best deal was, and some of the time that will naturally be on the first deal. Therefore, by effectively strong-arming the contestants into No Dealing, they are essentially denying what could, on occasions, be the optimum play.
The Banker has said he’d love for someone to go at the first offer, but when I was chatting to him on Twitter admitted that certainly I would feel I would have lost out on the experience if I was made an offer worth taking at 17 box, and perhaps that’s what a lot of people feel.
Sounds like he has a twist in mind for that scenario, then…
Oh, and it appears UKGS is down again.
I’ve pinged Will
Grr! Ratings Bear is up early to give you last night’s ratings.
Don’t Scare the Rabbit’s Drinking Habit: 1.5m (12.8%)
So You Think You Cannot Dance: 2.6m (16.9%)
So You Think You Cannot Dance Results: 2.9m (15.2%)
Who Dares Wins: 3.6m (16.2%)
Sing if You Can’t: The Extra Long 75 min show: 4.1m (20.6%)
Britain’s Got Talent: 10.0m (42.2%)
Million Pound Drop Thicky Live: 1.7m ( 7.7%)
Ratings Bear does not care with that Rabbit show. They should’ve used a bear to eat the contestants instead. In a few weeks Ratings Bear will be eating that Rabbit also that guy who doesn’t wear his suspenders and thinks he is Madonna, by using one name.
Ratings Bear will be eating Cat Deeley soon but will not eat Arlene Phillips as she is too gristly. That rating is ULTRA POOR. Kernick Kerknowles had taken a knock because he was not on last Saturday so some viewers probably didn’t know he was on. Well done to Queen Amanda and her jester David, Emperor Cowell is now 8 days from returning. Million Pound Drop did OK.
As for Sing if You Can. RAAAAGHHHHHHHGRR! Still, it lost to The Time Lord.