Pointless 500

By | June 6, 2013

It’s Pointless‘ 500th episode today! Well done Pointless team. I backed it from episode one and so far it’s the only show I’ve been to see live more than once (not twice, not four times but THREE TIMES TOTAL in fact). I’ve also been part of the Pointless 100 for the recent series going out, so I have no doubt there are more winners than ever.

It’s managed this despite not having the same format for more than about five episodes at a time, which is tribute to the strength of the core idea and its hosting partnership.

Recently on Twitter we described Pointless as The Most British Quiz of All Time (it’s about lists, nobody else in the world likes it or finds it baffling, there was probably another reason) and last year it won the prestigious UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar Golden Five, the reader’s vote for most outstanding show broadcast in 2012, beating even the mighty Only Connect (probably the Second Most British Quiz of All Time, narrowly beating The Great British Quiz with Janice Long into third).

To celebrate this event, let’s have a watch of Pointless’ very first episode. It used to have a very different format:


Amazing.

20 thoughts on “Pointless 500

  1. CeleTheRef

    rating figures from Italy:

    Reazione A Catena 3,264,000 22.31%
    The Money Drop 2,148,000 13.00%

    Top One (scream! if you know the answer) is the bottom one of its timeslot with 421.000 viewers (less than half than Naruto, which airs right before)

    Reply
  2. David

    Looks like the reason Exit hasn’t come up yet is because Syfy has put it on their “Everywhere” service- which requires people to verify they have a cable subscription by signing in through their providers (this is becoming more prevalent unfortunately, especially with cable shows)- they might move it to the website in a few weeks.

    And that puppet BBC gameshow will either be hilarious or be a bigger flop than Don’t Scare the Hare- maybe both.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      It’s a pity, but I’m sure I can wait/it’ll leak.

      I’m hoping to be going to an audience screening of That Puppet Game Show. If it’s got decent people behind it I don’t see why it should be the next Don’t Scare the Hare, although I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

      Reply
  3. Daniel H

    Nick Weir Catchphrase starts tonight at 6pm on Challenge, seemingly.

    Reply
  4. Brig Bother Post author

    And the new Pointless Final format: you pick a category and get THREE different questions on it. You get sixty seconds to come up with three answers, which you can split across the questions any way you like, a single Pointless answer will win.

    Interesting, means Richard has to go through three different sets of answers at the end, also means you’re unlikely to hit a dead end.

    Reply
    1. Chris M. Dickson

      FWIW, I like it. If the nature of the final questions asked has not changed (and I’m not a sufficiently big fan of the show to know whether this is the case or not) I would have expected this to lead to more small jackpot wins and fewer big jackpot wins, which suits me well. It should also lead to fewer situations where both team and audience are completely stumped and floundering, and gives the audience more chance of finding a Pointless answer and earning that particular smugon.

      On the other hand, there’s an argument that it might lead to exhausting the question universe three times as quickly, but if that’s a chance that they’re willing to take…

      Reply
      1. Brig Bother Post author

        From what I’ve read, it sounds like a way of using up questions with not many Pointless answers.

        Reply
  5. Steven

    Oh dear, those daytime figures are getting worse… here’s yesterday…

    15:00 – Perfection (r): 566k (12.5%)
    15:10 – Countdown: 163k (3.4%)
    16:00 – Tipping Point: 1.21m (17.8%)
    16:00 – Deal or No Deal: 499k (7.5%)
    17:00 – The Chase: 1.90m (19.1%)
    17:15 – Pointless: 2.50m (23.6%)

    They don’t include +1.

    That must be the lowest Countdown figure ever? I know a Sunday edition of Deal dropped to 280k recently.

    Reply
    1. Steven

      The Chase also seems to have dropped a fair bit, although I’m not sure how strong its +1 following is.

      Reply
      1. Brig Bother Post author

        Much of this can be put down to warm weather (I find it baffling that having filmed new episodes and having recently done repeats when it was slightly cooler, NOW is the time that the major afternoon quizzes put out new episodes.) although The Chase is showing a little y-o-y decline there. Yeah yeah, share, whatever, I’ll take that seriously as a thng when production costs halve because it’s a bit warm out.

        I did *say* Countdown would be lucky to improve much in its later slot, if anything it appears to be doing worse. I take no pleasure in Deal or No Deal’s demise, I almost wish they’d just kill it off and give the Endemol West team a fresh challenge, it’d almost certainly be worth a watch.

        It’s interesting that the standard solution is ‘give the shows a rest’, but what’s Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy doing differently in the US to still be top of their games (just about) after being on pretty much every weekday for 30 years?

        Reply
        1. Dave M

          WoF and Jeopardy both go into repeats for 8-10 weeks during the summer. I believe that the numbers sag a bit for them during the repeats, then pick up the following fall when first-run episodes start again.

          Could playing time-slot-carousel have also deflated Countdown’s number somewhat? There is the theory that if you play with a show’s timeslot too much, people aren’t going to know when it’s on anymore, and aren’t going to care after a while.

          Reply
          1. Brig Bother Post author

            And it makes perfect sense for UK shows to do the same. And we used to! I think it was Big Brother suggesting you *could* get sizeable audiences esp. of young people in the Summer that changed thinking, but I think it’s led down a rabbit hole that common sense would suggest is a bit silly.

            Summer’s the perfect time to fill with cheap repeats and more experimental stuff.

          2. David

            I think it’s a combination of things- the timeslot ping-pong never helps (The thing with Wheel and J! is that in most places, they’ve had the same general timeslots- the hour between the local and network news broadcasts and the start of network prime time), plus overexposure in Deal’s case (they probably should have axed the weekend show a long time ago) and the hosting shifts in Countdown’s (Which could be the case in 3-4 years here in the US- Trebek has all but announced he’s leaving J! in 2016, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Pat and Vanna leave Wheel about that time too- though it might not matter, as the success that Family Feud has had here across the many hosts it’s had).

            The summer is the perfect time to experiment with formats- don’t forget The Chase was a two-week summer trial at first.

          3. Brig Bother Post author

            Well last year’s summer experiment bought us Tipping Point, which for everyone’s kvetching, has done very well.

        2. David B

          The other thing to note about the US situation is that these two shows are only 30 minutes long. They are quite easy to fit into a life schedule. I just can’t watch anything longer than 45 minutes these days, prime time stuff like MasterChef and Apprentice aside.

          Reply
  6. Brekkie

    Countdown has always fluctuated hugely throught the year (hence when they get a new host C4 compare the January figures to the annual figures, rather than year on year), and ratings practically doubled when it returned to 3.10pm, only to drop like a stone once again. Axing it though would be criminal – certainly before Jay Hunt and David Abraham are held to account for the mess they’ve made of C4 in the last three years. I would cut the commission though back to two three-month series a year.

    Deal should have had it’s weekend episodes axed pretty much as soon as they started, and the stretch to an hour hasn’t helped at all. It’s a show I still think it pretty damn good watching it probably once every three months, but obviously people have tired of watching it daily. It too though needs longer breaks in order to prep a replacement or two for the slot – eight weeks off in the summer with two 4-week replacement shows, with at least one of those returning for a longer run in the New Year would be ideal.

    I guess 5 Minutes for a Fortune is probably done now given it’s ratings, but with C4 you never know. They only seem to axe established shows that rate well!

    Overall though C4 need to review their daytime strategy as they’re still aiming it at the same audience they were going after when BBC1 and ITV weren’t in the equation. I’d certainly refocus the 5-6pm hour on a younger audience building into the Simpsons/Hollyoaks combo, but there is definately still room for a decent daytime alternative at 4pm.

    Reply
      1. Steven

        I think it skyrocketed up to 510k or similar once or twice.

        Sad to see it drop this low; will be interesting to see how it does towards the end of the year.

        I would say get rid of Nick as I don’t think he has paid off, but the turnover of hosts has grown tiresome, so I don’t know if that would do any good.

        Reply
  7. Brekkie

    Really not a fan of the new Pointless final round – just over complicates things IMO having to try and think of three things at once rather than one, and makes it more difficult to play along with at home.

    Also the show is getting repetitive now – was watching an episode the other day I was convinced was a repeat as I remembered questions on F1 winners and Peanuts cartoons before, and it was only when this new-fangled final round cropped up I realised it was actually new.

    IMO The Chase is holding up much stronger as time goes on – and I hated that show when it debuted! The rotating Chasers though really help it feel fresh.

    Reply

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