No, not the latest winners of the Mercury Music Prize, this is kind of a follow up to the old The Price Is Right post recently. I do recommend a look if you haven’t already, I promise it’s interesting.

This afternoon I took part in another economic experiment, something that comes round every few months, and whilst I can’t go into it as it’s still ongoing and there’s an off chance it might prejudice someone else, I might return to it in a few weeks, it was quite thought provoking. It also strikes me that what Youtube is missing is an idiot’s guide to the games of game theory and their real life applications, kind of like this one I’ve started watching but with more people talking to camera and visual gags. Somebody sort it, I’d be all over it.

Getting back to the title, I discovered through some Youtube suggestions quite an interesting short-lived show in the US from the late 60s the other day called Temptation. It’s interesting because of the rather darker mise-en-scene than you’re probably used to from a show from this period. It’s interesting because host Art James smokes a cigar. It’s interesting because it’s got a spinning stage. And it’s interesting because frankly it wouldn’t surprise me if Endemol came up with something along these sorts of lines about ten years ago when game theory based gameshows were all the rage.

Here’s how it works: Three contestants see three prizes on a stage – one of low value, one of medium value and one of high value. They each lock in which one they want, and if they’re the only person to pick it they win it. This is done five times with increasing stakes each round, in rounds three and four everyone votes then Art gives a hint as to who has picked what and the contestants get the opportunity to change their mind. In Round five if you’re the only person to win a prize you win all three, and as the person who has the accumulated the highest value of prizes gets to come back as champion that’s almost certainly enough.

The video quality here isn’t great so be warned:

It’s pretty much a show that’s exactly 40 years ahead of its time.

…because according to this press release Cash Trapped is returning to the 5pm slot for an extended run from 31st July.

Don’t worry, we’ve already done the ‘The Chase is getting axed again’ gags on Twitter. This is the first year it’s had two breaks in a year though, although this one is during the more traditional August.

Which means I still don’t know what they were playing at with Babushka.

Edit: Because I can’t be bothered to do a new post for it, there’s discussion of Weakest Link returning for Children in Need with a view to a series in the comments.

Broadcast reporting that The Million Pound Drop is set for a sensational reduced-stakes daytime comeback where players will try to keep hold of £100,000. I hope the money is still in £25k bundles.

Davina’s back but no word on timing (60×60 eps sometime in 2018) or whether it will still use the Million Pound Drapp. Still though.

No reason this couldn’t work, there have been several fairly successful daily versions in Europe.

The Krypton Factor is, of course, one of the top five – maybe top three – gameshows of all time and you can argue with that if you like as long as you understand nobody cares what you think. Even the short lived Ben Shepherd reboot was perfectly reasonable in the main.

For whatever reason I found myself looking up old KF title sequences. Around the period of 1984-1986 they were absolutely terrifying in the way only KF and its pushing of the contemporary technology was able to be.

First of all we have flying over an alien landscape whilst letters, some hands, a giant eye and a big head fly into the screen to kill you over a terrific alien Mike Moran synth soundscape which they had been using for a few years previous:

Now this has been around for years and is old news, however this is relatively new to Youtube, the first and original Art of Noise titles from 1986. It still features the rather easy intelligence test but then it goes in a rather unexpected direction – it’s about 25 seconds into the video:

They don’t make them like that any more. Probably for the best.