Prepare to speak your brains, the UKGameshows.com/Bother’s Bar annual poll rounding up the year of 2013 is now open and waiting for your votes.
You can read instructions for voting by e-mail on the UKGameshows.com site here.
Alternatively (and preferred as it makes it a bit easier to add up and leaves a paper trail) we’ve got our very own form for you to use right here (and linked to in the sidebar on the left). It’s not very pretty but it’s beautiful inside, and that’s what really matters right?
Lines close 11pm Wednesday 15th January. Best of luck to all the runners and riders.
We discuss last year’s biggest shows in this week’s Fifty 50 Show, give it a listen.
Also we’ve got a poker game going on tonight, the first episode of the Bother’s Bar Monthly. Come and join us for cards and ‘laughs’, 8pm start, ten minutes late reg available.
Related to the last post, someone uploaded three more eps of 100.000 Mark Show, including a special celebrity charity one…
http://www.youtube.com/user/angainor?feature=watch
Cheers, may spin this out into a proper post tomorrow.
Series 70 (70!) of Countdown premiered today, and it looks like Rachel is still checking words in a good old fashioned printed Shorter Oxford. What happened to all the kerfuffle last autumn about switching to a laptop?
Er, Susie, but you know what I mean.
I read that it had been ‘delayed’; whether that means scrapped or not, we’ll see.
Tuned in today and was pleasantly surprised by Nick Hewer, who seems to finally be settling in. Now I’ve said that, he’ll probably jack it in this year.
I still don’t like the new scoreboards/CECIL very much, I must say.
Are revivals eligible as new shows or not?
As far as I’m aware, revivals ARE eligible. Anything that’s on the list of New Shows In 2013 are eligible to be voted for.
Well it says you can vote for revivals, so do the math.
So here’s a poll question which wasn’t asked. Which TV channel contributed most to the life of the UK game show fandom in 2013?
If you take the extremist view that the attraction in game shows comes from their innovation and modernity, it would only be a little flippant to answer South Korea’s tvN, taking the viewpoint that the Genius was more interesting than every new game show in the UK in 2013 combined. Slightly more defensibly, it would be being only a little bit too cool to argue that BBC Four deserves the gong for not just the average quality of their game shows, er, show, but also the aggregate total quality of their show being higher than that of any other channel.
Realistically, I think you could certainly could make a case for Channel 4; in terms of new commissions, they’ve certainly had the quantity, but they’ve also had the quality in Five Minutes to a Fortune. Thinking about returning shows, they certainly support the genre, with everything from Four Rooms to Deal.
Damnit! I should have remembered Four Rooms for my Golden Five ballot.
Oh that might be quite a fun thing to add next year.
This kind of comes out in the wash whenever we do a General Election year, as you can see from the analysis about 2/3rds of the way down the page:
http://ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Gameshow_General_Election_2010
Even with a votership that doesn’t particularly rate reality/talent shows very highly, ITV has always been the leading channel by this methodology, with C4 not far behind but waning. BBC2 is on an upward trend, but it’s sad to see BBC1 a bit stuck in a rut.
True, but I was hoping for a bit of passion, argument, heat and light rather than a slightly arbitrary (though, to be fair, as good as any) scoring system.
The role of a columnist is to spark discussion, as someone better at this columnism lark said. To that end, I’ll answer the question.
Which TV channel contributed most to the life of the UK game show fandom in 2013?
Mr. CMD is begging a question: how does one define “contributed to the life of the fandom”? I’d say the biggest contributions are attracting new fans, and giving existing (and new) fans something to talk about.
At the moment, I think that needs primetime hits. So the returning hits Bake Off and Masterchef and their imitators, The Chase (with an added frisson from Mark Labbett’s trips over the pond), Pointless, Strictly and its clones.
The protest in the Britain’s Got Talent final could have prompted a mass debate over Simon Cowell and his popular culture hegemony, but didn’t. The Apprentice and X Factor didn’t seem to generate much chatter, though I may well have tuned some of it out.
And there were the renewable new shows: Splash!, the ten-second talent show. Big Star’s Little Star, like being wrapped in a light and fluffy towel. Perhaps the Catchphrase revival, maybe even Food Glorious Food.
Love ’em or hate ’em, it’s easier to share an opinion about something arousing strong emotions in the viewer. It helps develop a “this is good, this is bad, and this is why” about these programmes, and that is the key to (any) fandom. And it’s much easier to do that about shows other folk have seen, than it is about esoteric shows in foreign, or even esoteric primetime shows hosted by Clare Balding.
Back to the original question. Purely from having more shows worthy of comment, the channel contributing the most to the fandom is ITV.
Surely the be all and end all of what provokes discussion in fandom is what actually provokes discussion in fandom, rather than what has the potential to provoke discussion in fandom – As you yourself noted, some of the things you’re listing, while having the potential to generate chatter… Simply didn’t.
I’d also argue that the All Time polls, even if we accept the premise that the channel who makes the best (in our view) game shows contributes the most to the fandom, which I think you’re rejecting, the channel by channel analysis of the All Time polls would be telling us which channel has contributed the most to fandom overall, rather than this year.
…Anyone fancy writing a spider that will crawl Bothers Bar to get some sort of analytical metric, although highly biased to a subset of fandom, of that – You can remove some of the bias, perhaps, by looking at other sources (the three that you can possibly get metrics of the quantity of discussion within the fandom I can think of, off the top of my head, are gameshow confessions submissions and buzzerblog comments). Since we’re looking for a ‘this year’ metric rather than an ‘all time’ metric, I’d suggest, if doing it using that metric, restricting the search to shows broadcast this year (on any channel, including foreign and repeats – While broadcasters are national, the fandom is an international affair), commissions that have been announced for future years, and general discussion about channels.
…Though would we credit the hundreds of Eurovision posts to BBC1, BBC3 or the EBU?
Of course, that would only create an incomplete picture – Discussion Within Fandom doesn’t capture Things Fandom Made Because Of; It would miss the fan made simulated game shows, the Fantasy leagues, the Suspect List, the Schlag den Raab commentaries and the like.
Oh, I agree that the best measure of fandom is involvement. I choose to prioritise lots of people getting slightly involved over a very few people getting very involved, because spreading the net wider makes it more likely to catch some fine fish.
People got involved in the cookery shows, they liked Pointless or The Chase or both. Jo Public had an opinion on Splash: it may not have been repeatable in polite company, but there was some involvement. They’d watched the show enough to form an opinion on it, and were prepared to express that opinion.
As far as I’m concerned, the greatest thing one can do to a fandom is legacy, ensuring it remains lively into the future. So tell me about the people we’ve brought into the genre. Folk who have spotted the #onlyconnect octothorpe on a Monday night, linked it to the show, seen it, been bowled over by Jamie / Sam / Victoria’s snark / questions on underwear. Speak of people who don’t watch game shows, except they love ice-dancing on a Sunday, and stick around to see those famous people in the middle.
Spread the word, replenish the pool, keep the barrier to entry as low as we possibly can. That’s my passion.
Oh, and with this being a Commonwealth Games / Winter Olympics / FIFA World Cup year, are we having another All-Time Poll this summer? Time to see whether The Million Pound Drapp stands up against a critical reexamination of Blockbusters, inspired by the Challenge remake.
Probably, but let’s get this poll out the way first!