I mean it doesn’t feel like The Chase formula – be pacey and have a bit of personality and chutzpah should be *that* difficult to recreate and is obviously something that the ITV 5pm crowd like. So why the Summer replacements never do anything like it is beyond me. What is the point of trying to out Pointless Pointless? There’s already a perfectly good Pointless and it gets stronger every time the counter programming is rubbish.
And so we come to Gift Wrapped (don’t click on that link before August 12th by the way or you’ll go to prison) with Ruth and Eamonn starting after the 21st Question‘s run for a fortnight which sounds like classic 12 Yard, with all the connotations that implies.
Why not try something aggressively entertaining?
Meanwhile Idiotest starts on GSN in the US next Tuesday. It’s either going to be great or get very tiresome very quickly, and I’m not sure which it is.
I hope they’ve gone with Radiohead’s Idioteque as the theme.
Meanwhile Two Tribes with Richard Osman begins Monday August 18th at 6pm (pushing Eggheads to 6:30) on BBC2. We wrote up a recording session here.
Interesting question.
A couple of theories off the top of my head:
1) ITV’s actively commissioning for something different to The Chase rather than something that feels the same. (I’m not an industry person – though, as ever, I am available but not cheap – so someone else might want to confirm or deny that).
I’m not sure there’s necessarily that many ways to do a quickfire quiz that lasts an hour, actually… The Chase does it, but only by playing the individual rounds four times and varying the pace significantly there. Don’t know.
2) I fear that basically anything ITV put on at this point might be a bit doomed with Pointless on the other side. We’ve seen Channel 4 have this problem, and have attributed it to C4 not really knowing what they’re doing. But it might just be that with Pointless being the juggernaut that it is, and viewers having a much greater opportunity to timeshift/+1/just go online instead, anything that’s not really great but just mildly diverting will lose viewers at speed.
I think we’re at the point where things which are really well-produced and which capture the public imagination can still get traction, but anything else is just swamped by the alternatives. (So 5MTAF, Draw It, Ejector Seat etc. – all perfectly competent productions, but missing the spark of greatness – can’t get viewers, where they would have a decade or two ago.)
Probably ITV’s best strategy at this point is the lazy one – repeat Chase year round, especially with it being an ITV Studios production – which is a shame if you want to see new quizzes being tried regularly.
That said, if 21Q keeps getting 1.5m or so, it might be worth a longer run in the 4pm slot with some tweaks and seeing if it gets any traction there. Dunno.
I recognise that the substance of this comment basically boils down to “But internet!”, which is never particularly satisfying, but that’s my thesis. Hopefully other people can comment on whether this is actually all that different from the past.
I don’t think a replacement needs to be quickfire, but it does need to have a little bit of energy and confidence, there’s not much happening in 21Q and I’m not anticipating much out of Gift Wrapped to be honest.
I genuinely don’t think there’s a problem with having The Chase on all year round (I believe there is a thing in the contract requiring breaks), as I always point out, it hasn’t hurt Wheel and Jeopardy in the US being on five days a week 52 weeks a year.
I don’t see why they don’t put The Chase on all year round either. It’s not as if ITV can say they’re trying to avoid burnout by taking it off at 5pm because they’re showing repeats of it in every other slot anyway, it’s on today at 12.30 *and* 10.40. You may as well show it at 5pm and be done with it (although I’d be interested to see how it does at 12.30 as I think This Morning followed by Loose Women is the most appalling scheduling, the two shows are virtually identical, and would like to see how a totally different show manages).
You could argue that both shows would burn out quicker but I don’t know if that’s the case. Deal Or No Deal and The Weakest Link declined but neither of those are as strong a format as Pointless and The Chase, so both those shows depend on the execution. On Deal you run out of different gimmicks to stick on it, on Link you run out of insults. With Pointless and The Chase the formats are strong enough to work on their own terms and could potentially run forever. Countdown’s imperial phase was probably the late nineties when it was on all year round.
I don’t get bored of repeats of Pointless either, I just don’t watch them. I can see from the Radio Times and the EPG when the repeats are on. As it stands it means I get breaks from it but people who want to watch it all the time can, the best of both worlds.
I don’t see why ITV feel the need to take The Chase off to try these new formats, they should surely try them elsewhere in the schedule and then if they start catching on, that’s perhaps the time to start alternating them with The Chase, if they must.
I think ITV is trying to think ahead and abroad- trying to find the next good format they can sell to other countries. (I still think Tipping Point could be amazing if the French or Italians got a hold of it). Doing these shows on a short test run doesn’t hurt them much (if it doesn’t work in the UK, it might work elsewhere- and having 10 episodes is as good as a pilot and at least they get some return on it by airing it).
I think having the show breaks helps a show- keeps it from burning out (Yes, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy do run all year long here- but that includes 8 weeks or so of reruns in the summer).
Absolutely, but 21Q is a NBCUniversal show not an ITV Studios one, so I don’t think they’ll be getting that rich off of international sales unless there’s a gap in my knowledge of media conglomerates (possible). They are absolutely correct to try and find new hits, but surely you look at a show, you look at a slot and you think “…no.” There is little stand out about it, and what you do put in there should try to appeal to the same large mainstream audience.
I don’t think it matters how often you run a show, I think everything’s got a shelf life and it will last as long as it lasts, there’s no way Deal or No Deal still gets five million ten years later if you only had the foresight to run it weekly.
You’re close, David.
Just sniffing media forums and just spotted a Belgian prodco having acquired the rights to Tipping Point. VTM, a Belgian-Flemish commercial channel, trials the show this Autumn, trying to convert some Tetris (Blokken, the show the public broadcaster, VRT, is airing for two decades straight – Ed) addicts.
Big Star’s Little Star is also coming to Belgium, also picked up by VTM.
Pointless 2.48m (23.6%)
The 21st Question 1.42m (14.2%)
Tipping Point 1.41m (19.7%)
Big Brother 1.19m (7.5%)
Perfection 0.72m (12.5%)
Couples Come Dine With Me 0.71m (7.1%)
BBBOTS 0.63m (6.7%)
Deal or No Deal 0.40m (6.1%)
Countdown 0.29m (5.0%)
Win It Cook It 0.24m (3.2%)
All including HD and +1 where appropriate
Thanks Paul.
As for the other stuff…
In the UK the major networks don’t take any international rights in shows they commission in usual circumstances (except those produced “in house”, obviously). Other networks (UKTV and Viacom channels being notable examples) will take either all international rights or a share of international rights as part of the deal when they commission a *new* show, but that doesn’t apply when they commission a show which is already on air in another territory.
And this business model is gradually being adopted by networks around the world. The big American networks will now typically start negotiations by asking for 100% international rights, for example, as will the Israeli networks. In fact one of the reasons Israeli producers are so aggressive in the international market is because if they can sell shows abroad first them they can then retain at least some ownership of the intellectual property if and when they sell them at home.
I reckon it’s only a matter of time before the main UK channels start asking for similar terms. Channel 5 will almost certainly start when Viacom take over, I should think.
So in summary, unless something weird is going on, ITV won’t own any of 21Q.
As for why ITV’s quiz commissions are so “safe”, well first of all TV commissioners are inherently risk averse (I wrote a comment on this a few weeks back, I think). But beyond that, you shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that anyone in television has a “grand plan” when making decisions. The British entertainment television industry generally makes it up as it goes along (with a few exceptions).
Nor should you make the mistake of assuming that the people who commission and make quizzes look at them in the same way as people who actually watch them. In a decade doing this job I can count the number of executives I’ve met who I believe would actually choose to watch a daytime quiz just for the enjoyment of it on the fingers of 80% of one hand. And only one of those is on the commissioner side of the desk.
So they look at shows that already work, and cherry pick the parts of those that they think *might* be responsible for their success. Hence the BBC commission:
– A quiz in which a sarcastic quiz pro takes on a team of contestants, some or all of whom might win some money.
– A quiz in which people answer questions to gain a vaguely superficial advantage in a stylised version of a fairground game.
– A quiz devised by the creator of Tipping Point with a big “iconic” centrepiece.
– A quiz hosted by Richard Osman.
Some or all of these might be brilliant formats, but that’s not why they were commissioned.
Or perhaps this is all unwarranted cynicism from someone who needs a holiday. Who can tell.
Surely a theme by Idiotape?
So Idiotest is essentially civilian 8 Out Of 10 Cats Do Ask The Family, or at the very least the host is a family-friendly (in this show) version of Jimmy Carr. Lots of trick and the-trick-is-there’s-no-trick questions, and I’ll happily admit that I was pleased to be caught out by one of the subtler visual gags. Not a vast amount of content, but nevertheless a decent pace to it. The entertainment could have been a lot more negative than it actually was, but nevertheless I do feel sort of dirty having watched it; not sure whether or not I need to see a second episode.