OK, so the big thing going around Twitter is the (actually pretty old) news that The Gurin Company has bought the rights to Sunday afternoon favourite Bullseye, and together with one of the original creators Andrew Wood they’ve created a million dollar version of it (involving having the players score 401 in 9 darts which while technically possible was never actually managed by any Bronze Bully professionals in the show’s lengthy run) and it’s guaranteed to be on American telly and, and, and…
Here’s the reality: it’s a nice story but not only is there not much room in the US market for a darts quiz, I’m highly doubtful anyone in the US is actively looking for a darts quiz. If it actually makes it to air on a major network, I’ll eat my hat. On the off chance GSN pick it up, I reserve the right to replace eating my hat with a lovely KFC, mmm!
It probably does not help that people suggest the Spikey show wasn’t very good despite the fact to all intents and purposes it was exactly the same show is was before it was originally axed, but with a different host and two fewer tunes for Pounds for Points and an elongated set.
Bullseye is currently touring theatres.
Edit: Here is an exciting rebuttal from Andrew Wood. Please remember in years to come that I don’t get much pleasure being right:
As the creator, deviser, writer and owner of Bullseye I felt compelled to comment on your factually incorrect article about Bullseye. The show was not axed and the end of series 15 on ITV. The company wanted to make series 16 but we declined as the contractual conditions demanded by the network were unacceptable to me and would not have been in the best interests of either Bullseye or its fans. Their offer was declined and we walked away.
Their are 18.118,000 Americans that play darts at least twice a week. Darts is in the top 20 participant sports in America. Both, The Gurin Company and (CAA), Creative Artists Agency (probably the most powerful and influential Agency in the world) love Bullseye and are convinced that Bullseye will find a new home in America.
Bully’s Million Dollar Jackpot.
The contestants have the option of trying to win, Bully’s Million-Dollar Jackpot.To win Bully’s Million-Dollar Jackpot they risk losing all that they have won on the show, money and the prizes. The team must score 401 or more with 9 darts. The enormity of the challenge is matched by the enormity of the prize. The maximum that can be scored with 9 darts is 540.To Win ‘Bully’s Million-Dollar Jackpot’, the team must score 401 or more with nine darts. The dart-playing contestant throwsthe first three darts, the ‘brains’ throws the second three darts and then the dart-playing contestant throws the final three darts.
OR
The team have the choice of having the guest professional dart player on the show throwing the first three darts for their team, followed by the ‘brains’ throwing the second three darts and then the dart-playing contestant throws the final three darts. If the team fail to score 401 or more they do not win ‘Bully’s Million Dollar Jackpot’ and they lose all the money and prizes theywon on the show. All is not lost however. Whatever the team’s final total score is the host multiplies it by 10 and the contestants get the cash equivalent of their team’s score. For example, if the team scores a total of 320 they win $3,200 dollars. Although the contestants are disappointed at not winning Bully’s Million Dollar Jackpot they are happy with their cash winnings and the show closes on a high note. Every one’s a winner.
I do hope you have the courage to print my comments above.
Remember, You can’t beat a bit of Bully.
If those are the terms, I’m baffled as to why anyone would pick option one.
To reiterate my stance, I have no real issue with Bullseye, I just don’t think it is going to sell in 2011.
I’ll be immensely upset if round two isn’t going to be called Dollars for Darts, obviously.
Will be interesting if they do call it Bullseye over there as many game show fans will know a quiz show aired in the 1970s/80s by the same name but it had nothing to do with darts.
The more I think about Celebrity Chase, the more I hate the idea. Imagine if a celebrity actually beats a Chaser, the Chaser’s credibility will be damaged forever. This is a very risky thing for people like Mark Labett and The Governess to do. It could tarnish their reputations if a celebrity beats them.
Not necessarily. There’ll still almost definitely be the inevitable “£x,000 if you get defeated” thing. That, and if the Chasers DID win, would it be THAT career-damaging, honestly?
Americans don’t know much about darts. It’ll be a MASSIVE FLOP in America if a broadcaster actually picks it up.
Now, I have heard of an idea called Ultimate Champion. This is an idea where celebrities live in a house for a few weeks and every week they are given a challenge to learn a new art: singing, dancing, ice skating, boxing, opera etc. Viewers vote and the contestants are whittled down week by week. This is something which sounds like a fantastic idea. Any one working at production companies reading this page, I am here for you to ask more about this innovative, exciting, incredible new format.
BothersBar can you tweet this format idea to your hundreds of followers? I’m sure a developer will be interested in the idea. I have had very little luck with it after very positive initial signs. Your help is needed now. I will give you a 5% cut in profits I make from the show. Please.
That’s very sweet of you! But I can’t make deals with people when I don’t know who they are, snigger.
Please. Ultimate Champion is my passion. It has been rejected by Endemol companies and I have not even received a reply from BBC Light Entertainment department. I need this one break. Please.
Sometimes you just have to let go and try again with something else.
Have you possibly thought that your ideas have been cast aside because each and every one of them is void of any compulsive hook?
Even High Stakes (1.9m) has one original mechanism going for it, even if it’s flawed to the bone and otherwise completely derived from bolted-on bits of other programmes.
Judges, talent, whittling one person down a week – why do you bother? They already pay their own people to keep churning out the same shit over and over again, they don’t need a member of the public to do exactly the same.
This is not to say I believe you are actually an Endemol employee, given that your ‘insider predictions’ are invariably wrong and your manner of speaking is akin to that of someone well under the age of 18.
And as for taking a dead pilot concept and hoping none of us will notice and shower you with praise for it…
I no longer work for Remarkable Pictures, I shall admit that.
I beg my pardon. Remarkable Television 😉
Could this explain why you are proposing the formats on here throughout today?
I take it you decided to leave or they did find out what you were doing on here?
I know how Tim feels. He has created many formats on paper but production companies and broadcasters don’t have any interest to take ideas from non-employees.
I wasn’t ‘sacked’. Due to the financial problems the company has faced, a number of staff were let go.
Regardless of anything else, I’m sorry to hear that, and hope that you and everyone else involved finds something that brings you great satisfaction very soon.
I was joking with the other bit about your postings on here.
I gather you won’t be providing any more Endemol based insider information? Since most of your Endemol informaiono is/was accurate but the other stuff like The Chase was totally wrong.
I would be happy to retweet your proposal but I only deal with reliable and trustworthy people. More importantly, people who have an identity so I know who they are.
I would retweet more messages from The Banker than you.
Fans of Big Brother seem to be enjoying the current series from what I gather on Twitter. Fresh twists and tasks are making this the best series since 2006. Not necessarily my opinion but what the general consensus seems to be this year.
Which fans are these, then?
From what I’ve read over the weekend. Some fans are complaining about the Saturday edition featuring 25 minutes of footage which was already shown earlier in the week.
I’m also inclined to know who these fans are that are raving about the show. Also I wouldn’t use twitter. Digital Spy is the best place.
My thoughts exactly.
Oh, Joe – surely you know that virtually no-one watches Channel 5…
And the few who do watch it do so only for Australian soaps.
After all, the demise of that other soap, Family Affairs, at the end of 2005 generated pretty much no interest – while in the present day, Matthew Wright is no (er) Mr High Stakes, is he?
And as regards game shows, very few people outside of the community got excited by The Mole…
Répondez s’il vous plaît.
What are your thoughts on this game show format called ‘First and Last’:
A game show in which the contestant who stays in the middle of the game wins. First & Last commences with 10-12 contestants competing in many challenging games. Their aim is NOT to end up first or last. Why is this? Because it’s the winners and the losers of each game who are eliminated.
After four rounds, the three remaining contestants battle it out in the final game, where they’ll be handed a briefcase lots of cash. The finalists will be put into a secret booth where they’ll have a couple of minutes to decide how much money they are prepared to leave behind and how much they want to walk away with. But, just like every other round, they can not try to take the least or the most. The person that exits with the middle amount of cash is the winner and will walk home with that sum of cash.
I can’t find the evidence, but I’m pretty sure this was a piloted idea before. Didn’t seem to go anywhere, unless if it sold abroad, but I can’t remember.
It’s an idea I had sort of thought about once myself, but as it turns out yes Art, Justin Lee Collins has already did a pilot for it.
It was also exported to Italy as I remember watching the first episode. It got axed after one show since nobody watched it.
As others have said, it’s been piloted before. The bit about choosing money was kind of done in the US recently with “How Much is Enough?” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H65NCWdCYvc
And that show did no favours for GSN’s reputation. 😉
What do you think of this format, called ‘My Family Has Talent’:
‘My Family Has Talent’ is a talent show that sees families battle it out to win over a panel of judges and the public to be voted the most talented family in the nation.
Each week, 8 family members come together to show off their extraordinary talent in the studio. Their performances can be anything, ranging from from singing and dancing to comedic acts or gymnastics, anything is possible. After each performance, the judges comment and scores each family out of 10. The judges vote combined with phone voting determines which family will carry on to the Grand Final. In the final, the winning eight families from the previous eight shows perform one final time for the nation’s vote. The winner will be crowned the ‘Most Talented Family’ in the nation and win £100,000.
I’ll be honest. If you are thinking about creating the ideal format then you must think outside the box.
Ultimate Champion doesn’t scream at me. It’s simply a Celebrity Big Brother/Back to Reality clone. I don’t think viewers are interested to see celebrities in a house, learning a new art. Don’t forget that ITV’s Born to Shine has already done exactly to what you proposed. That show bombed in the ratings.
My Family Has Talent. Same again, Britan’s Got Talent, SYTYCD?, Let Me Entertain, Fool Us You have already done it.
But couldn’t you say that same thing about all the successful tv shows these days? X Factor is basically a Pop Idol clone with a couple of differences which itself was based on Popstars. Got Talent is based on Opportunity Knocks and The Gong Show, with a few twists. The Voice is based on X Factor with a few changes. Strictly Come Dancing is based on the old Come Dancing format, with the added celebrity element.
Nearly all the big shows are based on shows of previous years but with slight changes. Very few shows are actually completely original or really innovative. Shows which are original and innovative more often than not end up not becoming popular with the public because it’s too “niche” or “odd.
‘Don’t Scare the Hare’ is probably the perfect example of a show “thinking outside the box”. Look at what a disaster that turned out to be. I actually applaud the BBC for trying something different but people in the industry are well aware that unique or things outside the box nearly always don’t work.
The public love familiarity among their TV shows or some kind of theme which they can engage with.
Not particularly different. Tedious prop-based challenges trying very hard to be ‘entertaining’ (in a BBC way) without actually managing to entertain.
When I watch one episode, will I want to tune into another to see a different array of characters, situations, decisions? Or will every single week feel exactly the same?
But the games weren’t dramatically different from the pilot – they were dull then, they were dull now albeit in brighter colours.
I recently won a pitching contest at work so I’m not without knowledge in this area. Firstly someone pitched an idea not dissimilar to ‘My Family Has Talent’ and came joint second so it’s not such an out there concept. It needs a better title, tournament format and scoring system so it doesn’t feel like a rehash of BGT and Strictly, family shows rarely have big cash prizes so maybe rethink that, but Talent Shows are still popular even now.
I nearly pitched an idea called ‘SuperStar’ which was similar to your ‘Ultimate Champion’ – although with more abstract games. I chose my other idea to go with on the basis that MasterChef and Strictly have the ‘Celebrities learning things’ market all sewn up at the moment – there’ll be a gap in the market when Sir Brucie retires I imagine.
As for ‘outside the box’ the trick is very much to make the right tweak to a format. Pop Idol to X Factor changed all sorts of things, but the important change was competitive judges/mentors. One small change that totally transformed the ratings and age profile. Don’t Scare The Hare on the other hand was just ‘Why Did The Chicken’ with a robot hare that couldn’t do much, or It’s A Knockout with less Stuart Hall and falling over. In other words their USP was none of the above.
The idea I won with uses elements from Estate of Panic, Run The Risk, Deal or No Deal and Knightmare but it has one central concept that while not new, has never been used in the context of these game styles. I was reliably informed by young Mr. Fincham that that fact that I had a new combination of concepts was what had won (That and my hilarious pitch).
Hope that’s helpful (and naturally if my idea gets a commission you guys will be the among the first hundred or so to know – lets face it, I’ll only be in the top fifty or so!)
“The idea I won with uses elements from Estate of Panic, Run The Risk, Deal or No Deal and Knightmare but it has one central concept that while not new, has never been used in the context of these game styles.”
COMMISSION X200
Yes that sounds very much like The Sort Of Thing We’re Into.
On the other hand: THE DOOR.
May I ask, do you work for ITV?
Yes, I’m part of the Scheduling Team at ITV.
Darn mobile phone – rather obviously that was me!
Was it the ‘Pitch Star’ event?
It was yes, presumably that means you’re a collegue?
Sadly, I don’t work at ITV. But I was there recently and saw it in the Watercooler. Which site do you work on?
By the way sorry for the reply under my comment instead of your’s as it’s not letting me reply to your comment.
Apologies, there’s an eight-level nesting limit on replies.
Ok. Thanks for explaining Brig.
I’m from ITV Leeds, or YTV if you’re old enough.
Begs the question why no one has done what Stefan Raab has done with Eurovision.
He created a version for Prosieben where the 16 states of Germany are each represented by an act and publicised by local commercial radio.
ITV should try a version of this out, but use their regions(inc. STV and UTV). My idea is for there to be 5 weeks of ‘regional’ live shows, where 7 people are whittled down to 3 for the regional final, and one wins. They then go on to represent their region at a live grand final at say the Excel Arena or the O2 in London.
This idea maybe a bit more expensive than X Factor, but it would be a hell of a lot shorter!
I think therein lies the problem, while X Factor pulls in 11m+ per week, ITV would like it to be running for as long as possible!
True. But Brig, if The Voice UK is the same here as in the US, then it will be a shorter run. Plus, I think viewers are becoming tired of the X Factor. Every entertainment show has a shelf life, even the X!
I reckon BBC have made their first mistake by saying the live shows will be in April and May. They should’ve had them earlier to maximise their ratings and aired them around February/March.
Will be interesting if it will be a third successful import since their track record is poor. They’ve only had Wipeout and The Apprentice (which outlast the original US version) as the successful shows here.
It begs the question whether Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole is the reason to the slight dip this year.
ITV have got a problem. If they decide to end the series what are they going to replace it with? At the moment they only got The X Factor, I’m a Celebrity, Dancing on Ice and Britain’s Got Talent as rating bankers but they are comfy in their respective weeks/months. If you look at the latest ratings, The X Factor got 9.90m but the next biggest entertainment rating was TV Burp with only 4.21m.
I hope the show performs well in the US but I cannot see it airing on a major network. There is more chance Bullseye could be airing on either GSN, PBS, Fox Sports or ESPN.
Michael Davies tried to import darts to America by creating the World Series of Darts in partnership with the PDC but it didn’t set the ratings alight. They tried again with a new format called the US Open but they decided to axe that in 2010. The PDC also launched the Las Vegas Desert Classic in 2002 but they decided to end the tournament after July 2009.
This’ll never see the light of day. Darts is not popular in America. Traditional style game shows are dead in America (despite the fact that they do well but that’s a topic for another day). I don’t see what on earth makes them think any American network outside of a content-starved one like NBC Sports would do this, and even that’s a stretch.
There’s a NBC Sports?
Apologies for not explaining. Long week. We’ve got a channel called Versus which basically shows hockey games and a few other assorted things like the occasional lacrosse game, but they’re trying. Owned by Comcast. When Comcast bought NBC they announced they’re renaming/theming the channel and it’s going to be NBC Sports.
If it’s going to sell, then Versus/NBC Sports Channel is going to be the only place I can see it going. None of the major networks will buy it, and that only leaves ummm.. Versus or ESPN3 or ESPN News.
I’ve also read today that NBC Sports may be ramping up original content post rebrand of Versus as well (as well as moving the sports division of the peacock network out of 30 Rock upto Versus HQ in leafy ol’ Connecticut)so if they are trawling for new formats, there’s one.
Not sure though the low budgets for a digital sports channels (even with Comcast’s credit card blowing the breeze) would stretch upto a nightmare potential top prize of upto $1 million.
I think this show has a chance at ONE season… if it has gratuitous cleavage (which is totally possible in America). At that point, enough people will have panned the show specifically for boobing the tube that anyone who actually watched it in the first place would be shamed into never watching it again.
In other words, a severe amount of irony has to come into play for it to make it to air.
If I’m being absolutely honest, feels right for provincial theatres, playing to the nostalgia market. If the show comes to a theatre near me, I’ll be there, and there will be a review in a subsequent Week. Warts and all. It just feels wrong for a shiny, glossy, toothy-grin game show for intensely vacuous people. (Is that the right spelling of “vacuous”, Bully?) Like Brig, I desperately hope I’m wrong.
. Day 4117, and Fay and Jem are having a row in the garden. After nine minutes of their contretemps, there’s a commercial break, and the argument continues afterwards. How do we know it’s Fay and Jem? Because there are great big stonking labels saying “Fay” and “Jem” plastered over them when they return from adverts. I appreciate that not everyone watches every minute of every night, but to name the characters we’ve just been watching for the last ten minutes demonstrates contempt for the viewers. Compared to last year, too few geeks, too few queers, too little philosophy.
I’m probably being very hard on Joe here – but, for some strange reason, reading about his formats brings to mind a song that has these lyrics:
“Kicking in the front seat,
Sitting in the back seat,
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?”
Coming soon from SYCO productions: Simply Red or Rebecca Black?
“Their are 18.118,000 Americans that play darts at least twice a week. ”
Really? 6% of the total American population plays darts regularly? Seriously? More Americans play darts over 100 times a year than Americans who play golf 8 times a year (15M), or go bowling 13 times a year (15.4M), or play basketball 13 times a year (18,005,000)?
Seriously, you must realize that darts has zero cachet in America. Furthermore, it has less than zero cachet among people who would traditionally watch game shows. I’d back a bowling or billiards based show making it before I’d back Bullseye making an impact in a land where 95% of people don’t know how much a bullseye is actually worth.
One thing I’ve always wondered about Bullseye – the original credits suggest the format was created by Andrew Wood AND Norman Vaughan – now I know he was Bob’s first replacement on The Golden Shot but I’m curious to know what his input was, and whether his estate still has any say in anything Bullseye related.
The other thing that’s hardly ever mentioned – the substantial input that Chatsworth had in the initial format.
Mmm, it’s always quite an exciting surprise to see Chatsworth (Bother’s Bar Production Company of the Decade for two consecutive decades) make a prominent appearance in the early credits.
Qusion- as a scheduler at ITV, can you say if ITV have big new entertainment shows planned for next year? Would you agree that the post X Factor months require a big show on a Saturday night for them. Are you looking for any new shows for that period at the moment, and if you are, how can I get in contact with the relevant people at ITV who will listen to my ideas? 🙂