Doubtless you’ll have seen that PJ and Duncan are set to top the charts this weekend with the amazing Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble after they performed it on Saturday Night Takeaway this last week. It was already in the Top Five in the All Important Vodafone Big Top 40 Sponsored By iTunes the day after they did it, but now it’s top of the iTunes charts so there’s a good chance it will be number one in the proper charts this coming Sunday.
We’ve long thought that people put too much faith in formats and that something that isn’t brilliant can still succeed if it can connect with the audience in some way, nothing really supports that view more than Saturday Night Takeaway does which is doing great numbers despite the fact most of the items in it aren’t actually very good (I’m a Celebrity… Get Out of Me Ear!, Ant vs Dec and The End of the Show Show not withstanding – do you know anyone who really looks forward to the Supercomputer?).
I read an interesting and funny post on DS (it does occasionally happen) suggesting that this makes Ant and Dec more musically relevant than The Voice which starts this Saturday, with its failure to make make stars of the winner.
Meanwhile in a change of tone you might have read about the sad death of a contestant whilst filming Koh Lanta (TF1’s very successful version of Survivor made by Adventure Line) in Cambodia. His name was Gérard Babin and he was 25, which is no age to die of a heart attack.
Let’s not get hysterical over this – this was the first challenge of the series (swimming from boat to beach) and he would have needed to pass health checks to satisfy the insurers of such a show, as such it’s difficult not to see this as “just” a very unfortunate event. People like testing their mettle. People like watching other people testing their mettle. Production companies want interesting (or at least the threat of something interesting) to happen, but the reality is injury and accidents after initial interest cause a lot of long term harm to production companies (this show was one of TF1’s and Adventure Line’s biggest shows, and now it won’t be happening this year) – not to mention the contestants of course, which shouldn’t be made light of.
Edit: It may be worthwhile to point out that not a lot of information has been released to the media over this yet, but the authorities are currently looking into it.
This is always a tricky situation- Remember the US show Pirate Master? One of the contestants committed suicide right after the 2nd or 3rd episode had aired (albeit by this point they had banished the show to online only because of lousy ratings, and the contestant had already been eliminated IIRC)- they did do an in memory of screen in the final episode.
And recently they had a situation in South Africa- Reeva Steenkamp had done a reality show for a network down there, and the first episode was supposed to air the week she was killed. The network in that case talked to the family, and they decided to let the show air as scheduled as a tribute to her.
Indeed, I gather there was a similar situation on Wie is De Mol? One contestant died between filming and broadcast, but had such a good time filming she wanted the show to go out.
I think there is a difference between someone dieing on set and someone dieing after a show is made, though.
In other news, Jack Black has bought the rights to Million Family:
http://buzzerblog.com/2013/03/jack-black-imports-japanese-format-hide-seek/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jack-black-imports-japanese-format-hide-seek
…or Hide and Seek as it’s likely to be sold internationally.
If Daniel is around and posting, do you have any links to episodes? I think all the old ones were in the comments on the old site which don’t exist anymore 🙁
And here’s an episode here:
http://t.co/6tkxh2p7M9
Mark your cards. Provisional listings show Five Minutes to a Fortune coming to Channel 4’s Saturday teatime at 5.15 on 6 April, for an hour. Getting it out before Dr Who.
This sets up something I don’t think I’ve seen before: game shows on all four main channels at once between 5.15 and 5.30. There’s a repeat Pointless Celebrities on BBC1, another chance to see The Great British Sewing Bee on BBC2, and The Chase With Celebrities ending on ITV.
And putting it out at 5.15 puts this on slap bang after the Grand National Coverge (assuming they are covering the 4.40 race) so, what’s the betting (geddit?) that’ll be two clebs from the racing world, and no doubt promoted once or twice during the actual coverage.
Presumably with a celeb episode if it’s a Saturday. Good spot.
Looks like Endemol is taking Avanti un Altro! to MipTV next month. They have given it the English title as Next One.
Promo video!
http://www.endemoldistribution.com/content/titles-formats.aspx?productid=68289
Cheers, they’ve really sold that (!)