Our friends at Inside BB are sure to have them.
Actually another site has broken the embargo, and the new house looks very sexy actually.
In other news, probably not gameshowy enough to get a full review but deffo worth a mention: Say What You See on iPhone and iPad is a fun game that’s sort of a bit like Catchphrase and carries the Bother’s Bar Seal Of Approval. It’s also free to try, so get to it.
Thanks for the plug Brig Bother
After years of visiting the Bar and getting plenty of recommendations for some fine shows (what happened to The Phone US, and why could I only get 3 episodes?) I’ve made it to the front page.
In other news I thought Amazing Race Australia was a lot better than most recent US races. I guess a combination of some good teams and the mini-tasks at each clue box helped. Hopefully the US show will use the latter idea for the next race.
Million Pound Drop back Friday 2nd September, tickets here: http://www.applausestore.com/applausestore-book-show.php?id=153&bid=1
Possible Endemol v Endemol primetime smackdown. Exciting!
This isn’t good news if you’re a BB fan…
http://totalbigbrother.com/news/bb-creators-endemol-uk-in-debt.tbb
Hmm. Swings and Roundabouts really.
Endemol Group is £2.2 billion in debt, but Endemol UK made quite a healthy profit last year (and I suspect, so did some other Endemol subsidarys around the world)
Question is – if things really get bad, would the main board at Endemol sell off the UK clutch of production companies to raise some cash for the rest of the group to help pay off the debts?
Given that the UK arm punches well above its weight compared to the rest of the subsidiaries, it would be highly unlikely. The entire company could be sold in theory, but who would buy a company with $4bn debt?
The article is wrong about BB being cancelled. If the company went bust, say, the liquidator would sell the format catalogue to the highest bidder as a ‘best efforts’ attempt to recoup as much of the money as possible. The situation could be tricky if it happened during the next few weeks, however.
There is a sense that Endemol is ‘too big to fail’ but that is one almighty huge debt, no mistake. Good news, though: the debtors are Goldman Sachs and Silvio Berlusconi (yes, really).
In possibly not-unrelated news, DoND’s been hurriedly pulled forward two weeks. Some of the commentators on the other side have predicted it might be to do with Channel 4 having the World Athletics Championships this year, which is easily and comprehensively debunked by the fact that there is no live coverage at that time and the highlights will be in UK primetime. Which leads me to think this is a desperation move related to Endemol’s financial day of reckoning.
Of course, it might not be the end of DoND – heck, ITV tried to buy the format in 2006 if I’m not mistaken, they picked up the Tesco Value castoff equivalent in FTROYL the following spring and if High Stakes is any guide are still looking to hop on the DoND bandwagon, so you’d have to believe they’d throw money at trying to get the rights to the real deal (pun intended) if and when the chance became available.
What’s the most prosaic and least conspiratorial explanation I can come up with? Channel 4 being competent. The channel is a) thinking ahead and 2) returning to tradition. They’ve got the Paralympic coverage for a fortnight next summer, and before that there’s some other sports that C4 will probably want to burn repeats against. So six weeks of No Deal next year.
Readers may recall an era when mid-August was a good time to launch new shows – The Weakest Link and The People Versus launched here, and Deal returned from summer break around the 14th in (at least) ’06 and ’07.
My boring theory: this summer break is shorter so that next year’s can be longer.
Summer break dates (last episode of old season – first episode of new season), as per the records of the other commentary place:
2006: July 22 – August 28
2007: July 13 – August 13
2008: July 25 – August 25
2009: July 24 – August 24
2010: July 25 – August 23
So for the last three years, it’s been a one-month break starting on the fourth weekend in July (the 2009-10 season ended with a Sunday episode, the previous two with Friday games), with the next new episode airing on the fourth Monday of August. This year’s expected break was one week later, but still four weeks long (as has every summer break since the five-week gap in 2006).
The 2006-7 season didn’t start as early as you recalled, but the 2007-8 season did. I can’t disagree that there will be a long summer break next year.
To be honest, the only question over this is why so sudden? There are over 100 episodes recorded for the 2011-12 DoND season. They will have been made on the expectation of a certain airdate, having to air in sequence, with themed episodes at immovable times of year.
Commentary speculation is now leaning strongly towards the idea that a two-week gap in October has been created for one-off episodes featuring previous unfortunate contestants. These could be filmed in the first scheduled taping week of the autumn recording period, and aired shortly afterwards. I have no immediate reason to disbelieve this, and there is precedent for such episodes from Australia.
It would have been interesting to see what sort of situation Endemol would have been in if they were still doing phone-in competitions. It’s a sort of pity for them really, two errors in judgement cost them a massive amount in revenue.
Never mind. Richard Osman and Glenn Hugill should set up their own company, I’d totally be the first person to Like it on Facebook.
I’m quite excited about Big Brother which actually I wasn’t a few months ago.