Right housekeeping: don’t forget to get your Fantasy X Factor post-performance predictions in FXF Mangers if you fancy changing who you went for, or even just want to have a guess if you forgot to put a prediction in earlier.
Some interesting things this week:
- Million Dollar Mind Game – Vernon Kay’s last attempt to crack the US which was shelved but is now seeing the light of day on Sunday afternoons, so if you practice the dark arts you might be able to see this sometime this evening. Six people answer questions of a mindbending nature to win cash, based on a famous and long-running Russian format (What? Where? When?) (Sunday, ABC)
- Fort Boyard: Ultimate Challenge: Some kind soul has been dodgily uploading this to Youtube so we’ve been watching it (no waiting until January for ME). And for the most part I like it, or at least I think it’s probably the best you’re going to get with a 22 minute run time (the fact it’s on three times a week with a structured tournament helps it maintain a momentum, I think). Can’t believe they’ve changed the theme though – and it’s a Paul Farrer special! Appropos of not very much, the Swedish version finished this week and their Duel version is very very good, to the point where it might have turned me. (Monday-Wednesday, Disney XD in the US)
- Only Connect – Edwards Family (featuring a member of our favourite games mag NGamer) vs Trade Unionists. Don’t forget there’s an app out! (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
- A Question of Sport – Hey, what’s this doing here, Grandad? I thought Bother’s Bar was meant to be cool! Well, you, it’s actually very easy to dismiss AQoS in the year 2011, but funnily enough it’s inclusion here this week (and it will only be this week) comes after accidentally catching a repeat yesterday afternoon. I’m not very much into sport, but I was intrigued by some of the question ideas and rounds the show has these days – one of them was basically a team version of the Jack Attack with pictures which is to be applauded. Sure it’s not the behemoth it once was but I think it’s a shame it’s quite easily overlooked. (10:35pm, Monday, BBC1 repeated Friday at 8:30)
- Coral Late Night Poker – Game two part two (24:40, Monday night, C4)
- Ton of Cash – The final. Enjoyed the show initially but I felt it getting lazier and lazier as the weeks progress, which is ironic when you think about it. (God knows when in the morning on Thursday night, VH1 in the US)
- Surely there’s no stupid bloody massive Stefan Raab thing this week
- Celebrity The Chase – Basically it was a year ago yesterday my Dad died, so family and friends went out for a meal yesterday (and thanks for all your wellwishes on Twitter and so on, by the way). What does my Mum bring up as a topic of conversation? THAT Fanny Chmaller episode. Anyway, here’s the first questionably thought out celebrity special. Look forward to Chasers basically denying lots of money for charity. (6pm, Saturday, ITV1)
And I’m just mentioning it here and now, the new series of The Cube begins next Sunday.
I think AQoS stands up still after all these years, but maybe Sue Barker is coming to the end of her run as host. I’ve got a feeling the next host might be Colin Murray as it’ll go to Salford like the rest of BBC Sport. Plus with two captains who actually seem to love what they are doing and egging along the guests, also its not all sports people as well…
With all due respect, AQoS’s glory days ended when Bill Beaumont and Ian Botham left in 1996.
I noticed looking at this week’s line-up they’ve dropped the ‘celebrity’ aspect, although I wouldn’t know if this is a regular thing or not (this series, 41, only began a month ago).
Colin Murray might be quite a good shout, actually.
Although she left 5Live before they made the Salford move, I’ve long thought Gabby Logan was the logical replacement.
Gaby Logan? No thanks. If she did become host of AQoS and she behaved like she did when she did weekday lunchtimes of Five Live, there would be a guest host for episodes 5-9 as she would be off on holiday….
Nahh.
I’ve always thought that it’ll be Jake Humphrey(sssss)who will take over.
It’s always been in Manchester, though.
I can confirm Stefan Raab will be doing absolutely nothing next week as even his chatshow is taking an autumn break.
great contestant last week on Avanti Un Altro, on a special episode, where all contestants were lookalikes.
let’s see how the lookalike of singer Renato Zero fared with the final game, in which the contestant must give the WRONG answer to 21 questions in a row.
the picture is flipped for copyright reasons
http://yt-subs.appspot.com/view?video=agd5dC1zdWJzcg4LEgVWaWRlbxjY2a4CDA
This is a brilliant clip, by the way.
This is brilliant, and I could see a UK version working not NEARLY as well.
But still, they should give it a try anyway.
Fun clip. The only problem with “go back to the start” stuff is that it’s possible for the last 45 seconds to be an anticlimax. At least they make it feasible to interrupt and answer from memory to catch up.
Very much so, although it’s been an Italian endgame mechanic that’s been around for about 20 years – I remember them using it on Luna Park, and it’s been adapted variously over the years.
RTI have claimed copyright already. Flipping is useless!
Pasapalabra jackpot alert – make one error and you kiss €1,014,000 (at least) goodbye.
http://www.telecinco.es/pasapalabra/
Even more bonus points, in that case, to whoever supplied the subtitles that RTI cannot shut down. The signal never dies!
The second round on UC gets underway tomorrow night with Clare Cambridge v Leeds.
Clare’s first match, against last week’s winners Worcester Oxford on 18 July, was close throughout, and only by getting the last starter and two bonuses did they win, 190-180.
Leeds had a more comprehensive victory, 220-115, over Goldsmith’s London on 19 September – but they, too, didn’t seal it until near the end, when they got a barrage of starters.
Like last week, this looks like being a very close match – but will it be just that until the very end, like Clare’s first match and unlike last week?
Verdict: Clare, just.
It’s the title decider of tomorrow. Defending champs David Edwards and Myfanwy Alexander need to beat the Midlands team of Rosalind Miles and Stephen Maddock, and beat them comfortably. But the Midlands pair are masters of the game, having lost just three times in their last 23 matches.
If all that’s too highbrow, next week’s Week should be looking at . And it’ll be out on Saturday, please do not adjust your calendars.
I can’t get Winning Lines out of my head having seen a double bill on Challenge earlier! Although seeing the silver fox without the…silver…was slightly surreal!
Question – The holiday ‘prize tree’ included New York and USA.
I was watching some episodes on YouTube around the September 2001 period, for obvious reasons they had to remove the New York and USA destinations starting with the 15th September 2001 episode.
How long did these stay off the destination list? From what I could tell they returned with the first episode of Series 4?
Did any other destinations vary during the show’s run?
Well, for the final two series, London (2 correct answers) became London Theatre and Italy (9) became Italian Lakes, while Hong Kong (11) was replaced by Dubai and African Safari (15) was replaced by South Africa.
My sources tell me that The Chase is being temporarily axed from its 5pm slot soon due to underwhelming viewing figures. It is to be replaced a show called Best Dish.
Britain’s Best Dish?
I have good authority (100% source) that this series is meant to run for 40 episodes. Episodes 36-40 will run from tomorrow to Friday. It will be replaced by Best Dish: The Chefs. Which is Britain’s Best Dish but will feature chefs all around the country. In a nutshell it’s Best Dish: The Professionals. This will run from 31st October to Christmas. This was the plan from the beginning. As we know, The Celebrity Chase will start on 29th October. I have also have good authority the next lot of episodes will be shown in January.
So either a PR expert from Endemol is right or a nobody who has never worked in television is correct again…
You decide!
I did wonder if I read this if it was just the end of the series. Thanks, Travis.
Don’t be mean Travis, you can’t call Joe a nobody!
From what access I have to ITV1 schedules – enough – I can tell you that Britain’s Best Dish has been scheduled to start on 31st for a significant amount of time. I don’t know where Joe’s information came from but in this case it’s wrong.
*snigger* Fanny Chmelar – best game show moment since ‘Snake Charmer’
and I wouldn’t call it “underwhelming viewing figures”. It’s currently second behind Pointless with around 1.7-1.9 million viewers. Dinner Date, which aired in the summer failed to get seven figures.
It’s been getting 2m+ for a good few weeks now, in the 2.3-2.5 region including +1 – putting it in a virtual dead heat with Pointless.
I’ve even heard from people who have pitched shows to ITV recently that they are, and I quote, “in love with” The Chase right now.
Chaps chaps chaps…let’s not let fact and accurate audience data get in the way of Joe’s biased BS.
Hey, Sir I-Dislike-The-Chase-alot… 😉
Do you know when Mastermind is coming back?
I have also heard that in December X Factor will lose its Saturday prime time slot possibly for as long as 8-9 months.
That’s *funny*!
After having watched the premiere of “Million Dollar Mind Game”, I can understand why ABC decided to consign this show to this ultima thule of a time slot.
What I cannot understand is why they bought it in the first place.
This show just does not fit the profile of an ABC game show. It would really be more at home on our Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)–that is, if PBS were not run by snobs for snobs and for critics who are themselves snobs!
Don’t get me wrong. The questions are more than reasonably brainy. The set is what folks used to call “chi-chi”, and the host and contestants are all dressed to the nines. Vernon Kay fits the show better than one would expect, if one only had to go by clips of his hosting of “Family Fortunes” that are posted on various blogs.
But ABC’s success in prime time game shows is based on shows that deal in action, with a decided tilt towards the slapstick. “Wipeout!”, in all its various incarnations, has been the standard for ABC’s prime time games. Think “Downfall” or “101 Ways. . . “, or even back to “I Survived A Japanese Game Show”.
Pacing for this show appears to be slow, and the impression is not ameliorated by the frequent commercial breaks that are a hallmark of American commercial television.
The final decision (on whether to take the money won or not) was played up for far more than it was worth. Now, slow pacing has been the norm here since “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”. I can accept it, although I rather prefer a faster pace.
In short, this show reminds me of the idea of a man in full dress suit attending a “tailgate” party prior to a NASCAR event.
I got home late from work so I missed the first fifteen minutes or so, but I loved what I saw, minus one huge thing that I won’t discuss now to avoid SPOILERS! Oh. for the rest of the crew here. I loved the question-writing, and I loved the creative responses to the questions. Hearing the banter back and forth (and in a language I know!) was amazing. It’s the sort of show I would love to be on if ever it would get another series here. (Though it probably never will.)
As for why ABC picked it up? I don’t see this sort of show being completely out of their league, and if any major network were to do it, I think they’d be the best match (CBS in a close second). Sure ABC has had a lot of recent attempts with more physical/physical-gimmicky game shows, but you can’t deny that a little hit called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire did them pretty well back in the day. This is just speculation, but with the failure/cancellation of some phys-quiz shows (Downfall, 101, I Survived), maybe they decided a change of pace was worth a shot? Couldn’t hurt to try to return to the “good old days” of primetime quiz dominance?
I think you’re sort of falling into a trap where you equate anything “brainy” with PBS, and anything even slightly “mindless” as any other network. It’s sort of the same thing whenever an Only Connect clip gets posted and everyone debates about how long it would last on PBS, and no other network. Good quiz shows have existed on other networks, it’s just that the current focus for primetime viewing seems to be comedies, dramas, and reality (though reality doesn’t seem as prevalent anymore?). I think it would take another good WWTBAM-esque phenomenon to get game shows back into US primetime for a while.
I really don’t want to come across as insulting, but did you know anything about this show coming into the debut? The glitzy atmosphere is pretty much identical to the original Russian version, and I think that even the tweaks to the floorplan (the open space around the table for Vernan to walk around in, with the audience back further) are still pretty good, it makes it a bit less claustrophobic. (Buzzerblog had a clip of the original a while back, never mind it’s a kids’ special: http://buzzerblog.flashgameshows.com/abcs-six-minds-now-casting/ )I think the NASCAR comparison is a bit harsh, considering it’s at least a healthy stab at counterprogramming, and I’m happy that they even let the show see the light of day at all. Overall, I’m impressed, and I hope this show gets more attention after it’s gone, in that Family Guy sort of way.
I’ll stand behind much of what I have said about this show.
More often than not, television networks here are more imitative than innovative. So, when WWTBAM? was a hit, other big-money quizzes came around, and there was talk of still others that never made it to a pilot stage, much less to a series. (I remember there being talk of reviving “What’s My Line?” in the wake of the success of WWTBAN?, but nothing ever came of it.)
I will agree that another phenomenon such as WWTBAM? would give a shot of adrenaline to the game show field, and to network attitudes about them. Even though some in the field believe that game shows “skew [too] old”, and that advertisers only want young audiences, big numbers do not lie.
I have been following the blogs on this one, and was expecting something as exciting as watching paint dry. This isn’t that placid. And it is a show where I wouldn’t mind getting together a team of my record-collecting pals and trying my mind at it.
I’ve known about the clip from the Russian show, but have avoided watching it, as I do not speak Russian. Therefore, I’d not understand what was going on. (Yes,it does help having a show like this in one’s own mother tongue.)
Remember the quote attributed to H. L. Mencken: “No-one ever went broke under-estimating the intelligence of the American public!”
Have they pulled “Impossible” again?!?!
Bonus points for quoting 24:40 in the Japanese TV listings stylee.
Incidentally how far forward do they go with those before they realise that going back to 0X hours is the smarter thing to do?
Schedulers work with a 30 hour day – or rather a 24 hour day starting at 06:00. It’s generally safer to say 25:30 on Friday than to say 01:30 Saturday when dealing with anything that has a cost or value attached.
I’ve no idea whether a 06:00 start is universal for TV channels across the world, but I imagine something similar is the reason Japanese listings have post 2400 times – or it could just be national convention. We need a Japanese scheduler on here!
I LOVE having a proper scheduler here for things like this. Thanks Qusion!
Does this mean that the scheduler’s clock, this Saturday, runs 2400 2430 2500 2530 2500 2530 2600 2630 and so on?
(I’m in clock change hell at work this week, but I imagine you must be as well…)
I’m doing CITV at the moment so no, I just add an extra hour of the ‘back at 0600’ slide. The schedules for clock’s back day just last 25 hours. The nice people who work our the programme billings have the difficult maths.
Qusion, as a scheduler at ITV, can you say why there is a hesitance to pull shows from the schedules these days? If shows like Holding Out for a Hero and High Stakes are only getting 2 million, why not pull these shows from the schedules and replace them with more popular shows. I am sure a repeat of The Whole 19 Yards would be more popular than those two shows…
Decisions like that are taken quite a bit upstream of me but these days there does seem to be more acceptance that shows should be given time to bed down in their slots.
There’s also the issue that swapping out a programme mid run means you have to pay both for the produced episodes – and for the replacement programme. I think these days people understand that repeats cost money. A show would have to be seriously down on the previous years for that slot before it would even be considered.
On top of that is the international market which someone mentioned above – something that struggles here might work elsewhere so ITV has to show confidence in the formats it promotes.
That’s quite interesting. I agree that shows need to be given time to bed in but if something like High Stakes is rating lower every week and is 1m below what the previous year’s occupant in the time-period was getting (Who Wants To Be a Millionaire), its audience probably won’t be picking up in future weeks. It is about getting the balance right between keeping underperforming shows in the schedulings and not keeping them. At the moment, the balance is wrong. From my experience, I would imagine a repeat of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire would be fairly cheap to show, no more than £50,000-100,000 and would result in ratings 1m higher than High Stakes. That is a switch worth doing, otherwise you damage the reputation of the ITV brand if newspapers cotton onto the fact that minnow channels like Channel 4 and BBC2 are close to or beating High Stakes. Just my thoughts on the matter, even though I’m sure you’re far more experienced on these sorts of things!
That’s an interesting question – how much does it cost to broadcast a repeat? If you have the rights to the program, then it can’t be that much, can it? Prove me wrong, people.
It’s more a case of – say you buy in a series for £100k per episode. You’ll get so many TXs of it along with so many narrative repeats. It would be ridiculous to think of the first TX costing £100k and all the remaining TXs being free – the repeats make money from being shown so they should also bear their share of the cost.
Of course it’s down to strategy to decide how the cost of each programme is distributed as some things have a really high repeat value and some things have very little.
Plus a ‘change to the schedule programme’ with a shaky performer like High Stakes against a heavy hitter like Holby would be schedule suicide – essentially devaluing whatever programme you put in there.
…oh and everyone knows ITV always struggles on Tuesdays.
Fascinating. But surely the cost of a You’ve Been Framed repeat is absolutely minimal? I’m talking about in the region of £20,000-50,000. You’ve Been Framed repeats can get 3 million in that timeslot, a million more than High Stakes. High Stakes fell under 2 million last night, this is not the sign of a show which should be kept in the 8pm schedule. By all means, get your money’s worth, by airing the remaining episodes at 5pm or 6pm on a Sunday night, but move it from that Tuesday 8pm slot. It’s getting terrible viewing figures, even worse than normal for ITV1 Tuesday nights. A few weeks ago, Missing Millions was doing almost 3m there. Seriously, it needs to be got rid off.
Also, do you have any idea on who I should contact at ITV to pitch my ideas 🙂 ? Ta
No idea who would be best to get in touch with regarding a pitch, I went through one if our internal schemes. The easy answer to the High Stakes question is that ITV1 strategy are happy its doing what they wanted well enough.
Ok, thanks for the help anyway. Incidentally, are you David Bergg? 🙂
Not that I’m aware of no :p
“…oh and everyone knows ITV always struggles on Tuesdays.”
A prime example of this being the 2004 series of The Vault…
And I don’t believe it helped that no studio player in this series got beyond question 9 in the final round – or that the monkeys chose to cap the jackpot at £1m without explicitly informing viewers.
It’s little wonder that hardly anyone noticed when Karen Shand won the million from the comfort of her armchair…
“How much would you like to win?” “Oh, £25,000”
“You’ve got a really good chance of avoiding a trap on the first one, 6 in 7…” “That’s not my strategy, I’ll take a clue.”
“I’ve got to take a clue.”
How on earth did this format get past the run-through stage? Or did they simply not have one?
It annoys me terribly when when things like this happen and people go “oh, it’s not that bad.”
YESITISYESITISYESITIS.
Haha yes, this!
I
It can’t be just for the floor and cost of it, can it be? Only other reason I can think is that they shot these for the sake of having on-air pilots to sell for America. I’ve heard from networks for some of my stuff that they want to see complete on-air versions (especially for anything that’s not bare-bones cheap) before they commit. The fact that this got greenlit defies logic.
Watching High Stakes on +1 for the first time. UNLEASH THE FURY.
And it’s barely ten minutes in and I’m headbutting the wall.
Jesus Christ.
“£500,000 is just six small steps away.”
Uh…no it isn’t! It’s 21, you bumbling ARSE.
I bet no one wins more than £25k this series.
Too bloody right. The fact that everyone’s going to play a clue on the first shot just proves that.
Oh wait, they’ll play a clue on EVERY shot.
There is a reason why PVRs were invented.
Can’t. We only have one Sky box, and my parents are using it for other, better things.
The first contestant didn’t do the research. Top Thrill Dragster hasn’t been the fastest coaster in years. The current record holder is Formula Rossa, in Dubai.
And after all that, all I can make out for a review is the phrase “utter shite”.
I only really watch High Stakes for the break bumpers from Keith at Lights Camera Bingo as I’m a member there 😀 I couldn’t help but quote them to him last night, and he played along like a real trooper.
To answer Dan’s query about repeats (above), these days broadcasters generally aren’t allowed to have outright ‘rights’ for independent productions. They will have a package of things they can do, which will state which channel it will premiere on, how many repeats they can show, whether it can appear on the internet and if so for how long etc. The more rights they want, the higher the price is for the package.
If they wanted to schedule extra repeats, they’d either have to renegotiate, or burn off one of their showings allowed by the initial deal, or pay a fixed fee stated in the contract.
I think in general repeat fees are around the 20-25% mark but maybe someone more knowledgeable could comment?
Just to clarify: yes, the broadcaster does keep a certain share in the future revenues of the format – should it be sold abroad or have merchandising produced, for example – but this does not mean that they can keep repeating it free gratis. However, the situation for old reruns on digital channels is quite different, but I think it’s still done on a fee-per-showing basis on the whole.