Fridays, 9pm,
Channel 4
The show is live and appalongable, so you might want to download the app in advance. It comes in Android AND iDevice flavour and before the live show works to a pretty high standard.
Yes yes OK, as we’ve pointed out it’s perpendicular Rising Star, several months before RS launches on ITV. However Rising Star has not been the worldwide success your media sources may have suggested to you, and this to me feels a little bit like Endemol have had a look at it, seen what works and what doesn’t and then tried to improve on where it doesn’t. And then Channel 4 used it as a spoiler.
And actually I think it’s quite an interesting prospect. The singer stands on stage and then you use the app at home to determine whether they move forward towards the Gold Zone and the money, or backwards and off the stage. And Alan Carr on board suggests they’re doing it in a way which means this isn’t intended to be a serious show at all, heavy emphasis on entertainment and laughs compared to RS‘s more po-faced approach. Top prize £15,000.
There are many, many question marks. We’ve noted in the past that even really good apps for playalong can still feel like work and not actually engage the audience – Million Pound Drop is actually played by what, about 1% of its audience these days? Can The Singer Takes It All‘s simple interface (literally press “hit” or “miss” up to four times in each performance) finally crack it? MPD still works as a show even if you have no intention of playing along with the app, how will TSTIA fare?
And finally and most importantly will the technology hold up? In reality it’s a load of snapshot opinion polls which shouldn’t be too difficult, but will it cope with six figures at once? Will the digital broadcast delay be a factor? What if the treadmill malfunctions? What if the contestants just start walking up and down it? And if the British public just grief everyone, will that end up being funny?
Well I can’t wait to find out. Unfortunately for the first episode I’m out and going to have to watch on catch-up, but I look forward to reading YOUR live opinions of the show and app integration in the meantime.
If the App fails during the live show, the vote switches over to a backup voting panel of 30 people watching the show live from a room next to the studio. I’m a part of this panel! The show is pretty funny, I hope it does well.
Well the first ratings for The Quest came in, and I’ve got two words for it- Pirate Master…It’s a shame- the concept seemed good, and some others had liked it, but it just didn’t work. (To show you how bad it was, it lost to a rerun of Hollywood Game Night- and from the first to the 2nd half-hour it went from 3.13 million down to 2.48 million viewers…)
I managed to get through about fifteen minutes before giving up, and I am very much “someone who likes this sort of thing”. Maybe when it got going it was brilliant, but *nothing* was happening, and the production was all wrong, and I got irritated.
It’s interesting that Reality Blurred, whose opinions I really respect, have really gone for it, but even Andy suggests that it doesn’t really get going until episode three.
I haven’t watched it yet, intend to do so tomorrow.
Just to add that I’m likely to do a small post for The Quest tomorrow morning for further discussion, but I don’t want to bump The Singer Takes It All until then.
Yeah but I *cannot wait* to share my OPINIONS. You could always move this whole thread to the other post.
Not what I was hoping for and in fact a reminder of how frustrating it is that game shows get to be made by people who are not completely and utterly on love with games. Let’s dream about the world where that budget was given to Tim Child. The show betrayed a terrible lack of confidence both in itself and more importantly in its viewers.
It’s not totally without merit. It looks great and the contestants seem very likeable. There are even a few occasions when the programme shows them playing a fantasy game, properly immersed in the world, though the vast majority of the show covers the contestants reflecting on their experiences playing a fantasy-THEMED game, and a very conventional one at that. Some cute slight twists, but very much in line with reality TV viewers’ expectations, rather than trying to cater to fantasy fans.
Nevertheless, I’ll keep watching. I fear that the show may not last very long on ABC as such but hopefully the other episodes will be broadcast somewhere, even if only Hulu.
Looking forward to dumping some contestants backwards off a conveyor belt… ahem, I mean, fairly evaluating musical performances.
(Predictions: Alan Carr will remain an acquired taste, ten contestants will probably feel like just about enough, it will be mildly diverting, and like most things that are mildly diverting these days*, the ratings will be adequate. By my “look how hard they’re trying to push the audience tickets online to make it look full” metric, probably not great.)
*5 Minutes to a Fortune, Draw It!, Ejector Seat, etc.**
**I do have a longer theory about how media fragmentation means quiz shows just can’t pull in the viewers unless they’re really compelling, but I’ll spare you that for now.
…aaaaaaaaand it breaks during the first song. Oh well, nine more attempts.
Voting starts too early on app, in relation to actual performance. First vote should be during 10 sec introduction, not while talking to Alan, IMO.
Also, I thought you could vote when you like during a performance, however if you don’t use the vote in a time limit, it’s gone.
Only criticisms though! Decent enough entertainment.
Well the voting has been working just fine for me. Yes the voting starts during chat with Alan but it continues through the 10 seconds countdown too. So you get a bit extra time on top. If you don’t want to vote during the chat with Alan then just wait. The app gives you a good indication of how long you have left to vote during the 10 second periods, or 15 for the initial period.
My first impressions are very good, the format is entertaining and strong and i like the interaction. Alan is doing a good job with the presenting and having a singer and a comedian on the panel with Alan is a good mix.
The public have just about got it right. When the singers are off the percentage goes down as it should. It is much more reactive than something like The Voice or X factor as you are judging in 10 second bursts.
Really think that ITV have missed a tick here, as i think from what i have seen of Rising Star this format is much better.
I was not expecting a carry over champion. The problem is you could get somebody really good who just steals the show week after week.
So basically the entire system is flawed. It’s decent enough entertainment, a singing show that actually isn’t a 5-month knockout tournament with a panel of indecisive judges is a good thing. But getting to the nitty gritty, it falls apart.
1: why do we get a 10 second introduction? I just don’t get it. We get a first impression from the chat with Alan, we don’t need another first impression bit.
2: the system for moving forward and backward is the most, well, backward system devised. It’s very simple, but a bit too simple: if your current voting score is above 50%, you move forward. If it’s below 50% you move back. I don’t even think there’s more than one speed on this thing, just forward and reverse. There’s a “gold zone” at the end, and the act that stays in there the longest comes back at the end of the show for the prize game.
The problem comes from the fact that acts generally do one of two things: shoot forward to the gold zone and stay there, or move forward a bit to start (because people are nice and upvote to start) then shoot backwards toward the doors. So to stay in the gold zone longest, you pretty much want to sing decently and sing a longer song. There were three acts on tonight’s show who went forward and stayed there, and one seemed to have a longer time than the others by 7 seconds, which I can’t account for other than song length.
Why the conveyor belt can’t just move towards a position based on voting percentage is beyond me. Say, 50% is in the middle, 75% or so is the gold zone, 25% or so is the doors. Because the conveyor’s moving, a rating of 25% isn’t an instant loss, they can make up for it, and it eliminates the problems in a simple way. It was even mentioned to me on twitter that it would make for a good Ejector Seat-style overhead shot, with an overlay of a percentage bar to illustrate their position if you want.
(also on a minor note, it looks like someone put the lyrics on the screen because they panicked upon seeing a giant gap between the two percentage indicators)
I initially thought there was only one speed forwards and backwards. After a few acts you can see that the higher above 50% they are, the faster forward they move and the same in reverse. It doesn’t seem to be too exact though.
The speed definitely varies. What I don’t know is whether it’s a carefully calibrated machine or just someone with a joystick moving it roughly to what looks about right!
Ok I’ve just rewound and timed it, it doesn’t seem as flawed as you think.
The first ten seconds is the intro to vote on first impressions. At the end there is a beep which is when the timing starts. After exactly 90 seconds there is a ting which is when timing ends. I’m assuming there are four 20 second voting rounds though I didn’t time that at the time.
The person who won got to the gold zone in 21 seconds (with 87% hit at the start) whereas the other two got there in around 28 (one had 73% hit at the start, sorry didn’t check the other) so I have to presume speed varies slightly with percentage.
I do think the flaw lies with the fact that if someone’s good they will head straight to the gold zone and stay there, the only factor in how long they are there for will mostly therefore be based on their intro and first impression hit%.
Generally, great fun to play along to I thought. Very satisfying working as a crowd to send someone back into the smoke!
Brilliant, thanks for clearing that up along with Pickpocket’s comments below. I’m satisfied with it not being song length.
By the way, I think Alan said the voting periods are every 10 seconds, rather than 20 as you speculate.
A friend of mine works on this show, so I’ll try to add clarity to some of your points Lewis.
There are in fact three speeds (three forward, three backwards) and all the songs are an identical length. That’s why people can spent different amounts of time in the Gold Zone. It’s fair in that sense. They perhaps need to find a visual way of showing that the conveyor speeds up and slows down.
Your solution wouldn’t work because the format is predicated on the singer being in constant motion and the singer starts in the middle (‘50%’) – if the first vote is, say, 90% hit, it would take the singer a period of time to reach that postion. So, unless the platform could literally jump around in a non-fliud manner (which it can’t), it would give erroneous results. Also, you’d never see anyone go through the doors that way, as they’d need to get 0% of the votes in your system.
I think there were problems with the first vote on the app starting too early – once they sort that out it should work better.
It’s not an easy one to get right because of the time lags between actual transmission, broadcast and sending the voting info from the app to the conveyor belt. They might be trying to do something that just doesn’t work properly with the current technology.
Aside from the teething problems, I really enjoyed it – it’s fun and engaging. If they can get across that the songs are the same length and the conveyor changes speed, then it should be better next week.
Hope that helps!
I do worry – if people move to the front and stay there, the time they get to spend there basically determined by the percentage of people voting for them in the first impressions section, which doesn’t seem particularly fair. Though it’s perhaps less visual, having it move with the percentage and the final score be whatever percentage they end up with would make it a bit more based on the singing.
(And there would be a bit more tension – if they become less popular but are still scoring >50%, they’ll go backwards. Whereas when they get to the front here, they just stay there. If you wanted to keep the “gold zone” motif, you have a variable length based on the score of the current winner and have the pyrotechnics go off when they pass that point, matched with some kind of effect when they reverse over it.)
As for the doors, I’d just set the “floor” above zero. Go below thirty or forty percent, and it’s an early bath. (Possibly a very early bath indeed, which could lead to some comic moments.)
It is, however, good to have clarified that it’s fair (both in the sense of the timing and the speed of movement), and as others have said, it’s a good show – well paced, knows its tone, and is fun. Like it.
To complicate the end game massively:
It looks like there’s 75 seconds to get to a £15,000 top prize.
I’d have a “gold zone” from 70% to 100% with the cash increasing the closer to the front you go.
(e.g. £50/sec beyond 70%, £100 beyond 80, £200 beyond 90%).
This doesn’t necessarily need to be made transparent (Alan saying “the further you’re in, the more you win” would do it), but if so, it could be overlaid where the percentages go in my fantasy overhead shot.
Or, for a simpler version, a total cash prize determined by where you are at the end of the song. (£0 for 50%, increasing by £3,000 per 10%).
Neither of these quite solve the problem that Lewis pointed out on Twitter of the audience not really having an incentive to be miserly…
Okay, let’s address this…
“There are in fact three speeds (three forward, three backwards) and all the songs are an identical length. That’s why people can spent different amounts of time in the Gold Zone. It’s fair in that sense. They perhaps need to find a visual way of showing that the conveyor speeds up and slows down.”
Okay then! They seem very similar from the shots and angles we got, but that does explain away why someone could spend more time in the gold zone than anyone else. Still a bit of a damp squib when it does happen that someone gets that max score on the second song.
“Your solution wouldn’t work because the format is predicated on the singer being in constant motion”
And that’s exactly why it would work! Currently, the singer is far from constant motion, as they shuttle forward to the front and then stay there for a minute. In my version, they would be heading toward whatever percentage they have all the time, being actually in motion.
“if the first vote is, say, 90% hit, it would take the singer a period of time to reach that postion. So, unless the platform could literally jump around in a non-fliud manner (which it can’t), it would give erroneous results”
That is also exactly the point. Yes it would take time to reach the current position – that’s why a bottom-grade vote doesn’t mean an instant out, it just means that the conveyor is heading in that direction. There is a built-in buffer/pressure time that can be used to influence things.
“Also, you’d never see anyone go through the doors that way, as they’d need to get 0% of the votes in your system.”
I think you’ve misread me there. I did say the doors should be at some non-zero percentage, and gave the example of 25% (though I don’t know if that would practically work, I was throwing out an idea). Similarly, the gold zone wouldn’t be at exactly 100%, which is just as impossible to achieve.
“It’s not an easy one to get right because of the time lags between actual transmission, broadcast and sending the voting info from the app to the conveyor belt.”
This is definitely the case. You just can’t do something live and completely interactive these days, as there’s always a broadcast delay (is that an industry standard or just something that all the channels have rules on?). It’s a shame because I’d like this to work, as I said it’s lighthearted fun that isn’t Louis Walsh’s Deadlock Bonanza.
You could see the stress on Alan Carr’s face throughout as presumably people are whispering in his ear “The app’s just gone down” but he just about held it together.
It was reasonably fun. Quite interesting how goodish singers started cracking under the pressure once they started going backwards, and the casting did a good job of providing surprise packages and obvious flap fodder (my term).
It does seem a bit of a flaw if a likeable, talented singer is second up and there’s little chance of anyone beating her.
Particularly enjoyed the standard talent show issue of someone starting off sounding good, getting to the chorus, and the audience collectively realising they’re not *quite* capable of hitting the high notes.
To see the people concerned literally go into reverse was quite amusing…
Quite enjoyed this actually, although I thought they missed a trick by not letting the audience vote for which of the three final songs the contestant would actually sing. Announce the three songs, 10 second vote, chat to contestant about which one they want/don’t want, reveal result.
Pacing felt right, which is a rarity with new shows these days. Tone was pretty well pitched as well, not taking itself too seriously, not trying to mimic other singing contests.
The endgame scoring did seem a little flawed, they’ve already proven that they’re a ‘hit’, so there’s less chance of them doing scoring less than 50% so the majority will move forwards and stay there. Aside from the song being unknown, there’s not much difference from their initial performance.
Too tired to watch this tonight, but will endeavour to have an opinion for you tomorrow. And also the opinion of my non-media Mum, for some REALNESS.
It’s not my demographic but it wasn’t for me. There was no jeopardy. The losers lost before they started singing. I would have preferred more to and fro on the stage, people being brought back to win from the jaws of defeat etc.
But as the early singer pretty much won it straight away the later singers didn’t even have a supper to sing for.
Maybe it was more fun with the app but as an old fashioned type who watches telly to see telly shows it wasn’t my cup of tea.
Now karaoke night at a car assembly plant with a crushing machine at the wrong end of the conveyer belt…that’s a show.
1.16m/5.7%, fifth in the slot. Ouch.
Expect the demos will tell a slightly more positive story though.
9pm ratings among 16-34 year olds:
BBC One – Commonwealth Games Day 9 – 0.78m (22.7%)*
BBC Two – The Secret History of Our Streets – 0.11m (3.3%)
ITV – Doc Martin – 0.23m (6.7%)
Channel 4 – The Singer Takes It All – 0.41m (11.8%)
Channel 5 – Big Brother Live Eviction – 0.31m (9.3%)
All including HD and +1 where appropriate.
* I’ve approximated this from the 15 minute breakdown, as I only have “official” ratings for the whole three hour programme.
I was about to say that’s quite poor, but actually second in the slot and likely higher next week without the CGs on.
Mmm, OK well I thought that was diverting enough, although if it’s the future of television then I can’t say I’m looking forward to it particularly. I thought it would be a bit funnier.
The game element isn’t all that great to be honest, it feels like there ought to be more variance in the belt, or it should be increasingly more difficult to stay in the Gold Zone, or *something*, as it is as others have pointed out everything basically rests on the first twenty seconds and you might as well not bother with the rest. If “time in the Gold Zone” is going to be the criteria then I might chuck a grand to all the singers that at least make it there and reduce the jackpot prize a bit.
It would be pretty easy to represent the speed and direction of the belt in the inch of screen space between the top of the lyrics and the top of the percentage meters. If it’s only got three speeds in each direction that’s easily done with < << <<< > >> >>> like on the show’s logo.
I thought the show was basically entertaining without the app, but if a sizable amount of people switched off when it was suggested the app wasn’t working then the show has failed I’m afraid. A breakdown would be interesting.
As a piece of entertainment it was great and felt right on C4 on Friday nights.
As a format though it had many flaws – the winner only seemed to win because their song was a few seconds faster, and once you’re in the gold zone whether you have 51% or 99% of the vote makes no difference. Also unlike good old analogue terrestrial far too many delays in broadcasting nowadays for real time voting to work – a couple of seconds on SD, a couple seconds more on HD. I guess the 10 second intervals is kind of a way around this but it would probably work just as well, if not better, with just a studio audience voting.
Didn’t do too great though for it’s first outing, barely passing the million mark. In a way hope it doesn’t do too well as knowing C4 it’ll be a new series every 3 months with episodes getting longer and longer with every outing.
If they do make the episodes longer, it would scale quite well at least.
I think the most important thing here is that they got the mood right. Some people are never going to watch a show with Alan Carr, but I thought he was probably a smart choice here, keeping it light and fun. It was also so, so good that they kept it fast: no strictly-esque VTs just a quick voice over and chat then the Bit We Tuned In For.
I agree with the general feel above, the actual game is a bit misjudged. For me, the problem is that the 10 second intro and the first 10 seconds of the song carry too much weight: for a good performer they are likely the criteria which determine the winner; for a middle-ish performer they still give you 20 seconds worth of forward or backwards movement. I really think the 10 second intro could go, it feels obviously arbitrary (and just not have them moving for the first 10s of the song).
Despite this, the general feel of Good singers go forward / Bad singers go backward was more entertaining than I’d expected. I hope they tweak the game a bit (and don’t see why they couldn’t) but pretty good really.
The app really does add something, I was willing someone back through the flaps, and it was quite exciting that I felt I could control that.
Not actually convinced Steve was the best singer, but he certainly knew how to sell it so glad he won.
The end game really is an anticlimax.
I was worried the app wasn’t going to work for me, it didn’t kick in until the second song.
It remains not a brilliant show, but a fairly entertaining not brilliant show.
2.2m votes cast tonight, apparently. If everybody used all four votes for each act that suggests a minimum of 70k playing along, probably more likely closer to 90-100k.
You’d be surprised how many people dip in and out of participation. 70k playing along probably means up to 150k played for at least part of it.
I’ve copied a few interesting snippets about the first TX.
“While the overnight ratings were underwhelming, 2.4 million votes were cast by more than 142,000 viewers, representing 14.3% of the audience at the time.
That beat C4’s previous interaction record, which was set by The Million Pound Drop in May 2011, when 12.4% of the audience interacted with the show.
Flynn claimed the app “removes barriers for interaction”. “If it [live voting] works for singing, what else can it work for?” he mused. “We’ve got something in development in a very different area, but that is based on app users taking control of a show. It’s early days, but there’s hopefully something coming down the line next year.”
1.10m (5.8%) last night including +1. Fifth in a slot which was won by a repeat of Doc Martin with 2.31m.
Cheers Paul.
This is actually a GOOD THING because it means a HIGHER PERCENTAGE of viewers used the app.
In all seriousness, expect it wasn’t fifth in the slot in the 16-34 demo, so.
It was first in 16-34 year olds with 374k. 318k for BB, 195 for Doc Martin, 192 for Bake Off spin-off, 170 for Walter on BBC One.
Thanks Paul, it’s the hidden element that doesn’t often get mentioned, and I expect C4 will be paying more attention to.
I suspect a young-skewing 1.1m is basically what C4 would’ve expected.
We probably ought to be comparing these numbers to recent MPD.
MPD hasn’t been doing very well at all at 8pm (under 700k for a recent ep), but it sounds like they’re after contestants for another series so evidently it’s doing OK where the money is.
In fact Channel 4 was first among 16-34 year olds from 21:00 until 23:00, when it succumbed to Family Guy on BBC Three.
Very few people in the industry pay any attention to any figures besides the overnight averages. Only Channel 4 and Sky (and to be fair I’ve not worked with Channel 5 so can’t comment on them) are making any effort at all to go beyond that one number, and even then there are vast swathes of people at those channels who regard all the extra metrics around now as the Emperor’s new clothes.
The TV industry is amazing.
I expect the reason C5 persist with Big Brother is because of the younger audience it brings in, and I expect when it’s finally taken over by Viacom they’ll pursue them aggressively.
Well, that would explain all the ITV dramas aimed at the 65-dead crowd…
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “ITV don’t care” – Take Me Out and The Cube post fairly poor raw figures, but they do quite to very well in their skews which is presumably why they keep getting recommissioned.
The one thing you can confidently say about commercial television, barring PSB commitments, is that if it isn’t making money in one way or another, it isn’t going to get recommissioned. (Even PSB things like news are expected to serve a commercial purpose too.)
Certainly at ITV and I imagine Four and Five, spot-advertising isn’t the be all and end all of revenue generation any more. Having the right kind of viewer, or failing that just all the same kind of viewer helps a programme. Some programmes just make channels look good, so get bonus points for that.
Big Brother does more than just 16-34s for Channel Five, it sets the tone of the channel to draw in more viewers. Even a programme that doesn’t do spectacularly in the ratings in the UK might be saved by international sales.
Whenever you see a series two of something, there is always a reason.
Looking at MPD you have a good skew to younger viewers. The aspirational nature of the programme making those viewers good advertising targets. Plus there’s Davina who is a channel asset for them, and the name of the show will look good in the listings in these cash strapped times. It’s a known brand and one that is definitely value plus in terms of the channel and finally it generates social media traffic which is the golden egg of broadcasting right now.
Does anybody know what Extra Slice got on BBC2?
2.05m, according to a tweet I’ve just read.
Do we have the rating for BB including +1 please?
Gosh, just 780k for this last night, although it was up against the Big Brother final.
690k for the last episode. Ouch. Still it is up against a resurgent Celeb BB.