In the LANDMARK 38th edition of Fifty Fifty, Lewis Murphy and Dave Mattingly talk about all sorts of things with a US spin.
In other news, BBC2 are showing choice i.e. really hard repeats of Only Connect on BBC2 all week at 7:30pm.
Finally, thanks to Telly Spy to went and saw the recent Rob Brydon’s quiz pilot, the one advertised as having the mediocre prizes. A summary of his tweets follows:
It was a bit like Blankety Blank. Two contestants answering questions, with five celebs (Gary Lineker, Hary Judd, Larry Lamb, Deborah Meaden, Sally Lindsay). One contestant then booted and the remaining plays for crap prizes like a breadmaker, chicken strimmer etc. Round one questions are like ‘In a survey, what is the most annoying thing on a plane…’ And in Round Two, the answers are numerical- celebrities answer and then an average is taken and the contestant has to decide whether its higher or lower. I.e how many arguments do the average couple have a week. It was funny and is a lot better than the BBC’s current Saturday night output. Would be very surprised if it wasn’t commissioned. The entire audience were in hysterics.
Most interesting is that it seems to be called Rob Brydon’s Celebrities, and there was going to be a show called Mrs Brown’s Celebrities before Mrs Brown pulled out after the pilot and the suggestion is this is a similar format. I believe it to be a 12 Yard format.
Just turned on BBC One and noticed that there is no longer a studio audience for Perfection. Did anyone else notice that? Or care? Actually… Perfection just started its fourth series. Who the hell is still watching it? I seem to be the only person who really doesn’t understand the point in Nick Knowles. He’s competent, certainly, but doesn’t (to my mind at least) deserve every new lottery show or 4 series of possibly the most repetitive game show ever…
I don’t know, they were advertising for an audience on Lost in TV, although that ad has been there forever so maybe it’s just a leftover from series three.
Perfection was getting around 600k last figures I got to see. It was doing 900k-1m at one point (when it was on slightly later in the afternoon admittedly), but it’s the Summer, so.
The prospect of Nick Knowles fronting a quiz is never one that fills me with a great sense of excitement, but after watching a show he’s done I get that he is actually quite good at it and that’s probably why he gets to front so many.
Is BBC probably trying to kill off Perfection?
It started at the start of this year at 3.45 pm, just a quarter earlier than equally popular Tipping Point, then 3.15 pm, 3.00 pm and now 2.15 pm.
It still comfortably beats whatever show they put on on C4, but the ratings are on the slide.
I was also watching today – I’m pretty sure there was a studio audience, they were just very quiet…
(Not sure why they bothered with one, to be honest – they don’t add much.)
With regards to why it’s still on – I imagine it’s pretty cheap to produce, quite easy to repeat if necessary and does at least adequate figures compared to other things. It’s never going to be Pointless, but it’s probably good enough for a lot of people. (Many of the same reasons can be used to justify the presence of Nick Knowles.)
Well the set is basically two large screens and a stool in Glasgow, so you’re right in that it must be a very cheap show to make.
JOE RAZZ!
http://www.totalcontrolmedia.co.uk/info.html
Wer Wird Millonär, the German version of WWTBAM (still going strong), shows two Gamblers Specials on September the 13th and 20th, which have a different set of rules:
– The money tree follows this route: € 100 – € 200 – € 300 – € 500 – € 1,000, doubles up to € 64,000, then € 125,000 – € 250,000, € 750,000 and finally € 2 million.
– All contestants go all-risk, so they only have one milestone (answering the first five questions correctly guarantees € 1,000).
– The fun starts with the lifelines, which are unlocked initially. Storm through the € 16,000 milestone without help and the contestant can use all four lifelines from question 10 onwards. If the contestant, however, gets stumped before the 10th question and touches a lifeline, he automatically forfeits the other three.