Surely SURELY one of the greatest set pieces in the history of television: Spaghetti Junction on New Faces. Keith Strachan and Ed Welch did the music:
I have no idea how pushing a button translated into lights, mind.
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…Why can’t modern talent shows give their results with that little fuss?
It was a bit more complicated than that, the actual winner is decided by people sending in postcards.
A year later, they had theatre audience voting combined with telephone voting AND postcards. How the weighting worked out I don’t know.
The finals were live and done by telephone vote, points given out region by region Eurovision style.
Is anyone aware of any prison-based game shows/reality shows that has ever aired? I have a HUGE idea for a TV show but need to know if there has been one made before. Thanks 🙂
Are you doing a revival of Jailbreak? Please tell me you were doing a revival of Jailbreak.
Jailbreak: http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Jailbreak
The Slammer: http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/The_Slammer
Banged Up with Beadle on Takeaway (sort of): http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Saturday_Night_Takeaway
Solitary (sort of): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_(TV_series)
The Experiment (not exactly a “game show”): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Experiment
Out of interest what happened to your other idea?
I think thats pretty conclusive
And I concur – Please say your reviving Jailbreak – such an underrated show
A deeply, deeply flawed show, however.
Well, ’cause it was on Channel 5, right? 😉
So was The Mole.
Well, yes.
But The Mole was also under-rated by the general public… 😉
Thank you for that list Paul B. I was aware of a couple of those shows but not familiar with some others. Also I was sure there was a programme called ‘Escaping Alcatraz’ or something of that sort of nature, but can’t find anything about it.
Regarding ‘Ultimate Champion’, development has been slow-going. A lot of things needed to be changed and unfortunately it’s not looking too good right now. 🙁
Who’d have thought?
In other news, based solely on the subject header of an e-mail I can’t open until I get home, there’s a winter version of Total Wipeout coming.
Yep, deffo happening. Apply to be a contestant!
http://www.lostintv.com/tv_show.cfm?f=1312560700393&content_type_id=278
Still a series on the “new” course to be aired, so perhaps that’ll get an outing in the autumn now. Makes sense to make one a winter edition if they need to film two series on the same course.
Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey have begun airing episodes from the updated course from Argentina (based on the Double Cross US course) – but they still use the old Raging Rapids Wipeout Zone.
Interesting observation in the credits. Richard Holloway was the co-producer and co-director. For those who don’t know, he holds a senior role at TalkbackThames but he is the Executive Producer on Britain’s Got Talent.
And Ken Warwick (credited under the vauge heading ‘Staging’) he is now Nigel Lythgoe’s right hand man at 17 Entertainment USA who produce American Idol for Fox.
Going back to Spagetti Junction, it actually looked much more complicated that it actually was. The lights of each act actually do two loops/circuts, and the voting from the audience in the hipp is probably converted into a percentage, which then equals two or three lightbulbs on the vertical last line upto the star.
The fatal flaw with voting for the next big thing (which I know riled someone who worked on the original New Faces back in the 70’s – because he told me) is that the keypads were not locked out after they voted. Probably because the system driving it wasn’t that clever in 1988, but he thought that was unfair as each act could get voted for.
It being approval voting rather than the FPTP system most gameshows use isn’t, imo, a flaw in the system.
Agreed, but if and only if that’s what the voters know what it is. If the voters know that they are free to vote for any number of the acts, including none of them or all of them, then it’s at least as good a way of doing it as any. If some voters think they’re only voting for one and others think otherwise then there’s a problem.
Can anyone remember there being ties on New Faces? Given that Spaghetti Junction looks like quite a blunt instrument, in terms of the twenty or so meaningful lights possibly representing 0%-5% approval, 5%-10% approval and so on, then one would have thought ties would be quite likely. It may well be that the decision as to how many bulbs to illuminate was taken manually by someone who could see the number of votes cast, who would have the authority to light extra bulbs based on the precise voting results in order to prohibit ties.
I did actually point that out – and on Bob Says opportunity Knocks you could throw 40 odd pence to BBC Audiocall in a minute or so by phonevoting for each of the acts.
I think he favoured the one vote for one act way of choosing a winner – whilst deliberatly forgetting that all the acts were marked by the panel on the original New Faces…
Yeah, as soon as I said it I immediately thought “Hang about, aren’t televoting approval votes where you can vote for someone as many times as you like?”
I suppose that’s closer to clappometer systems…
Sad news that FOX has dropped Million Dollar Money Drop 🙁
Yes confirmed by Fox boss Kevin Reilly.
http://twitter.com/televisionary/status/99556544429035520
Gotta love the start of that tweet saying “Shocker”. Thinking it’s the end of the world for American Television. Even RDF (Don’t Forget the Lyrics!), Mark Burnett Productions (Smarter than a 5th Grader) and The Moment of Truth had a longer lifespan than Endemol’s stint earlier this year.
Once again it proves that Americanising a popular import NEVER works!
That and ‘Loss focused gameshows are probably not going to do well in the US’
Err.. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is still going in the US (ok it’s now seeing its days in daytime syndication rather than on network peaktime) but it’s still on air..
In farness, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? wasn’t Americanised for ABC. When the show launched in 1999 everything was exactly to the original UK production. It was simply Americans playing the game for Dollars than Pounds. Their primetime demise was simply over exposure by airing 3-4 times a week.
Also in my original message I was more leaning towards FOX game shows than Millionaire since three out of four game shows on FOX had decent runs. The fourth one I didn’t mention was Hole in the Wall, which most of us knows it works as a family game show on Cartoon Network. Something the BBC should consider for CBBC.
Why would they put a family gameshow on CBBC for its first run, rather than, say, an early evening Saturday night slot? I mean, you don’t expect adults to willingly watch a children’s channel, do you? That’d be like expecting a mainstream audience to tune into BBC2!
OK – More serious response: The BBC at the moment (and I do think this is entirely correct) likes to use early Saturday evenings for ‘family’ programming, while putting children’s programming (and repeats of family programming) into children’s slots and channels. The BBC also seems to assume (And this is something I disagree with, meanwhile) that no adult is going to type 70 on freeview or… Is it 613 on Sky? Hence the utterly unnecessary Stephen Fry editions of Horrible Histories (…Though admittedly since they aren’t repeating S1 and S2 at the moment, that works for those of us who were a little late to discovering one of the three best comedy programs on British television at the moment). While I could see them repeating Hole in the Wall on CBBC, in the same way they’ve repeated Total Wipeout there in the past, I couldn’t see them commissioning a new series for CBBC since they view it as family rather than children’s entertainment.
I was thinking more of a CBBC production at 5.50pm on Saturday evenings with repeats on the CBBC channel.
Does the BBC’s children’s department actually have the sort of budget required for BBC1 to be using it to fill out it’s early evening slots? Bearing in mind that Sarah Jane Adventures only got a third series because the drama department added money to the pot.
It doesn’t particularly work like that. There’s a per-hour budget cost for each time of day, and although this can be biased by the type of programming that is chosen for that slot, generally the money is found from wherever necessary or – sometimes more likely – the chosen department works in conjunction with the department who ‘usually’ own that slot and they share the cost.
I think it’s worth while pointing out that CBBC has been repeating Hole in the Wall since the end of last year. It also repeats Total Wipeout and Merlin from Saturday teatimes.
HA HA HA!
Truth be told, I spent quite a while thinking what to type, and Brig kinda said what I was thinking, there. Now that’s half an hour I won’t get back.
Thanks Brig :<
Also proof that civilian Millionaire episodes haven’t been axed. Listen to Chris Tarrant: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012wgq4/Richard_Bacon_Chris_Tarrant_and_Edwina_Currie/?t=11m30s
All I’ll say is, I told you so 😉
What do you want, some kind of reward?
Idiot.
Might as well give him a dog biscuit for providing that informative evidence,.
Nope. STILL Doesn’t convince me Joe. As we’ve seen from the ratings, live celebrity episodes are now the way forward.
Am I missing something here? I listened through the commercial minute mark. I don’t see what you’re right about. They said it’s not axed, which we knew it wasn’t clearly. It wasn’t specified by either of them if civilian episodes was axed. They just asked if the show was axed, which, again, it was clear from the start that it wasn’t and anyone reporting that the entire format on ITV was dead was clearly not reading fully. Chris said he wishes they’d do civilian episodes, like many would, but they are more interested in live celebrity episodes.
I don’t think you told us anything. Richard said that this is the future for the show and that Chris is “arguing with ITV,” about it, and “maybe” they’ll do it must like anything could happen “maybe” but they are going forward with the celebrity episodes.
Well… I think ‘not renewed’ would probably be more accurate than ‘axed’ in this situation, even if they never make a new civilian episode, unless there’s an aspect to this I’m forgetting, so on a point of pedantry Joe’s correct.
They should do a week of “Non-celebrity specials”. If they did bring them back that would probably be the way, and given the current economy a show giving ordinary people the chance to win £1m would be welcome, especially if they did them live.
Didn’t the armed forces Gladiators specials used to do quite well? Throw in people like Firefighters, Coastguards, etc, call it a Hero Special, and I think you might be onto a winner…
When the reduced money tree was introduced four years ago they decided to dedicate special episodes to firefighters, nurses and the armed forces.
It’s clear from what Chris said that they’re not making civilian shows any more. No-one can see into the future to tell whether this is the definite end of the public shows or whether they’ll bring them back at a later date, but either way – this doesn’t prove Joe’s point one jot as things stand. Sorry.
Nice try – but from the other responses, it looks like it didn’t work.
I’m with Gizensha here–“loss-based” game shows don’t necessarily fly with us Yanks.
At that, Endemol has had a middling year here. “Million Dollar Money Drop” will be an entry in future editions of the Brooks/Marsh directory of TV programs. But “Wipeout!” continues to do good business here. And “101 Ways To Leave A Game Show” didn’t do as badly at holding the audience for Endemol’s splash-a-thon as had “I Survived A Japanese Game Show” or “Shaq Vs.”. In its penultimate week, “101 Ways” hung onto three-fourths of the audience bequeathed it by “Wipeout!”, and that’s even opposite “America’s Got Talent”.
Joe may be remembering the movie “Escape From Alcatraz”. That’s the best known abandoned prison in this country. If there were not some misplaced “Native American Museum” already there, I could see somebody wanting to turn it into the next “Fort Boyard”.