Show Discussion: The 100K Drop

By | May 6, 2018

Weekdays, 4pm,
Channel 4

Well it had been a daily show on the continent so in that sense there’s no real reason why it couldn’t succeed. Davina’s back with a version of The Million Pound Drop but with everything divided by ten – the prize, the bundles of cash (£2.5k each now) and by the looks of things the size of the drop.

Contestants try and keep hold of £100,000 across seven multiple choice questions. Will there be much appetite for watching people struggle to win £2,500? Don’t know. Putting it up against Tipping Point is either ingenious (TP skews old and The Money Drop traditionally skews young) or an acknowledgement that it probably doesn’t work, but they’ve sixty episodes to get through so we’ll see. As yet we don’t know if you can play along on some kind of app.

Ah, do you remember when pointless viewer interactivity was the in thing? Great days. Anyway you can let us know what you think in the comments.

35 thoughts on “Show Discussion: The 100K Drop

  1. Brekkie

    From interviews with Davina it seems £10k is pretty much the benchmark people go home with. Although at it’s peak I think it could have worked at 5pm with the £1m jackpot intact, before The Chase and Pointless really took off, I just can’t see it working at 4pm or at £100k. £250k they might get away with, and throw in an extra question to reduce the payout, but sadly history suggests primetime shows which have been slashed in budget and prize money for daytime don’t tend to do well. The live aspect was also crucial in the original run – it never felt the same when they went pre-recorded.

    A shame they didn’t give 5 Minutes to a Fortune another chance and that C4 aren’t targeting points of the year when the tough opposition is weaker – i.e. during the summer when The Chase is off air and Pointless goes off air (or to BBC2) for events like Wimbledon.

    Reply
  2. Score

    It’s actually got quite a tough standard to meet now too. After years of terrible daytime ratings on C4, Escape To The Chateau has been doing really well at 4pm over the past few weeks, shares have often been over 10%. Compared to Countdown and Four in a Bed doing 5/6% around it and other recent shows in that slot doing even worse it has been a big hit for them and I suspect £100k Drop is going to pale in comparison. The length of time it’s been sat on the shelf suggests a lack of faith in it too.

    Reply
  3. jon

    According to BBC website, they are launching a new show in a couple of weeks at 4:30 called Hardball.
    Quiz show with Ore. That’s a very bold move placing it against Tipping Point and 100K Drop for a first series.

    Reply
  4. Tom H

    Well that was perfectly fine, wasn’t it.

    It did at least feel like it had been remade with some love versus Millionaire – no dodgy sound cues or random Arial, and the question writing was decent. Hard to get excited about contestants trying to hang on to £5k, though.

    Reply
    1. John R

      It moved about as fast as the recording pace did, which is a good thing, but it does look odd on TV with the old tenners considering they’re two months to late to spend them! (Best get down the Bank Of England Davina!). If they had started recording just a couple of weeks later the new tenners were in fairly wide circulation!

      Most of it was bang on in terms of presentation, but sad to see the demise of Davina trying to walk up the stairs in high heels, the security bloke escorting winners off the set and the slow motion clips sequence during the end credits!

      My only real issue is still I think people will get bored by 60 episodes, unless they do a Crystal Maze and split it out over about 60 years.

      Reply
  5. George F

    Well it’s Drop, isn’t it?

    Like that the questions moved at a fair old pace and although the lack of real time/live ones isn’t around this time the variety was pretty good overall.

    Reply
  6. Weaver

    For the record, they’re playing the seven question variant, and Davina calls it “The Hundred Kay Drop”.

    This was a less cluttered show, and I think it’s because there is no playalong app. The pacing was tight, getting to the next question in good time without replays because they can edit bits out. It shows how much time was eaten up with interactivity and the mechanics of the live show.

    Questions are the typical Drop style, lots of oldest / youngest / biggest / smallest, very little straight-up general knowledge.

    Million Pound Drop got out at about the right time, just as we were getting bored of it, but before they’d run the game dry. And this? It’s as if the show has never been away, picking up where they left off.

    Reply
  7. Brig Bother Post author

    Yes it’s basically fine. Certainly can’t complain at the pace (I note they’ve cut the drop wait considerably) and certainly if you hadn’t realised the height thing you’d think it looked identical to the original.

    I never cared for the proposed interactivity but it was a great show to watch with other people to bounce off in real life or on Twitter and at that point in the afternoon it loses that aspect rather. Which is a shame.

    Also I can’t help but think that The Hundred Thousand Pound Drop has a better rhythm to it as a title.

    These are minor things really, not sure that people want it especially but it’s a decent enough production.

    Reply
  8. Peter H Todd

    It’s great to see C4 airing some quiz shows back at the 4pm slot.
    Escape to the chateau which aired at 4pm on C4 for the previous 4 weeks had the highest daytime ratings for the channel since 2014.

    I enjoyed the 100K drop, still as tense as ever and we all know what happened to the last C4 quiz Davina hosted… lest hope this isn’t 5 minutesto a fortune ratings.

    Not sure if it’ll get above 750K, hot weather yesterday and tough competition on ITV with Tipping Point.

    Reply
  9. Whoknows

    Only 320,000 (4%) for this yesterday. 1.5m (19%) for Tipping Point.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Really not sure what they’re hoping or expecting for this really. It’s fine, but it’s not like it needs to exist.

      Reply
    2. Callum J

      How did Cheap Cheap Cheap do when that started (though that was at 3pm)?

      Reply
        1. Brekkie

          Waiting for tomorrows figures so we can talk about the 100k drop.

          Reply
          1. Whoknows

            250,000 so The 70k Drop sadly. Meanwhile Tipping Point increased by 300k.

  10. jon

    Peter H Todd… “lest hope this isn’t 5 minutes to a fortune ratings”.

    I think about now they would be wishing/very very pleased for those said ratings!
    From memory 5MTAF was doing 600 – 950k – can anyone confirm figures for 5MTAF??

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      They were closer to 500k, unfortunately.

      Escape to the Chateau was doing 800k in the slot last week.

      Reply
  11. Pete

    Has anyone else heard the rumours that Win Your Wish List is coming back?

    I think it would be a good move given BBC’s recent run of shows.

    Reply
    1. Andrew Sullivan

      Something else has just come to light from a group I’m in on Facebook, series 2 of Cannonball has been axed.

      Reply
    2. Peter H Todd

      I enjoyed that Quiz. Shane was great host and it was a nice change to get the contestants to read the questions out. Why did they axe the show in the first place?
      The ratings were always above 3m.
      Was it because the company Victory Television shut or got taken over?

      I’ve always said why not try out the long running lottery (ex) lottery shows out on daytime tv at 215pm.
      In it to win it (Shame Dale Winton sadly died, he was a great tv host)
      Who dares wins (Nick Knowles had a great daytime quiz called Perfection)

      Do we know if Armchair Decectives is coming back? The ratings were alright for BBC1, it felt like a great it should air in the evening.

      Reply
      1. Des Elmes

        “Why did they axe Win Your Wish List in the first place?”

        I’m still under the impression that the Beeb were prepared to drop *all* the Lottery game shows when they stopped broadcasting the draws, and only kept Who Dares Wins going because of popular demand.

        After all, In It to Win It ran for fourteen years and didn’t get a send-off of any kind, and WDW’s scheduling has been rather all over the place in the last year and a bit – sometimes airing in the former Lottery slot, and sometimes before Pointless Celebs.

        I’m happy to be proved wrong, however.

        Reply
    1. John R

      I am assuming this is still doing rather badly in the ratings considering nobody has posted in the Digital Spy thread about it for 2 days now, yet the Tipping Point thread is still as popular as ever…

      Reply
      1. Alex S

        Tues: 259,000 – 3.5%
        Weds: 316,000 – 4.5%
        Thurs: 331,000 – 4.7%

        Reply
        1. Danny Kerner

          This will eventually be the numbers Crystal Maze will get sadly thanks to the mistreated scheduling.

          Reply
    1. John R

      The first couple today was one of the games I was in the audience for! I look like a smurf on TV with the blue audience lighting!

      Nice to see they’ve used the actual audience shots from the games rather than just filming a load of generic ones and inserting them at random…

      Reply
  12. John R

    Interesting editing today, they managed to squeeze in 3 games with the third rolling over tomorrow, I thought it had been edited in such a way you would always get 2 games per show, although I’m sure there will be quite a few games where they just end up bombing out very early.

    With Hardball having 890K viewers and Tipping Point having 1.88M viewers on Monday, this has probably lost 100K viewers though…

    Reply
    1. Richard

      Win your wish list is set to comeback by the makers of millionaire and blind date. This time the quiz will be hosted by gino dcampo and for channel five. A seven show run will air during the summer on channel five.

      Reply
  13. Josh R

    As far as I know of, there was an app for the pre-Brexit version of the show where you could play offline with different questions or play along when it was live and it is still on the app store, just redundant.

    Reply
  14. John R

    Davina is back with her trap doors from Monday 7th January, same 4pm slot. Another 60 episode run so looks like they’ve basically found their primary competitor to Tipping Point! (Which by the way has ALL NEW coloured X2 and Mystery counters!)

    Quite a quick turnaround as I think they only recorded them recently and have still got recording dates later this month too!

    Reply
  15. Destiny

    I don’t like Davina as the presenter of this show. My partner and I find her quite annoying as she does not sound genuine when speaking to the contestants, and speaks too much of their relationship which is unnecessary. We would prefer a new presenter for this show as it’s getting quite hard to watch with Davina being the presenter.

    Reply
    1. Des Elmes

      I’m well aware that not everyone likes Davina… but I still feel the need to point in the direction of the Digital Spy forums.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.