In other news…

By | September 16, 2013

A post for stuff not related to all the main events over the last few days.

Thanks to the uploader for putting up the premiere if new Aussie daily quiz and Millionaire Hot Seat spoiler Million Dollar Minute, I won’t get to watch it until this evening but why not knock yourselves out?


Also Amazing Greys which films its pilot on Thursday (the format where young people take on the elderly in a bid to win £100,000) is going to be hosted by Paddy McGuinness. Might be there for it, might not, we’ll see.

Avanti un Altro 2013/14

By | September 16, 2013

It’s back! It’s time to join Bonolis and Laurenti for the quiz where anything could happen and uniquely actually might as AuA returns for another seven-day-a-week run on Canale 5 in Italy for the next however many months.

New mini-world characters are promised and maybe a modification to the end game. And who knows what else?

If you don’t know what it is, we wrote a big thing on it last year. People answer questions on various topics for money, and they can sit in the champion’s seat with the money or keep pushing their luck to earn more as only the person in the champion’s seat who has the most money at the end of the game will get to the chance to take home what they’ve earnt with a hefty bonus in the world’s most fun tough endgame. Along the way regular characters will come on and ask questions for a bonus. It’s the most brilliant light-entertainment quiz for some time. In Italian.

Fingers crossed ungeoblocked episodes will go up here, but let’s hope the thumbnail doesn’t reveal who the winners are this time.

That’s Yer (Pi)Lot: Let The Music Play

By | September 15, 2013

Alright, it’s 2am so I might come back and add to this tomorrow. If you have questions please ask and I will do my best.

  • It was filmed at BBC Elstree, Ian Royce was the warm-up man, Amanda Byram is the host. Yes, the intention is it’s a National Lottery show.
  • The producer came on and tried to explain the format. It took him ten minutes. It would have been easier to say “it’s Name That Tune with Deal or No Deal elements” because that would have been instantly graspable.
  • The set is (for want of better word) dark. The stage is length ways to the audience with three main “bits” to it. Around the stage are 15 large screens in portrait pointing inwards (so if you’re in the audience it’s basically impossible to see all of them). Hanging from the ceiling and raised and lowered where appropriate is the “Jackpot Jukebox” which is just another rectangular portrait screen, I reckon it should be in the shape of a old-skool jukebox but never mind. In the middle area of the stage are two podiums, one with a “play” button on it and one with a “pause” button.
  • A family of four play – not a nuclear family, here we had a dad, his daughter, his sister and one of his nephews from his brother’s side. They select one person to play round one.
  • In round one the chosen player will face five songs, one of each of five screens. For each one a choice of two categories will show up (“Eurovision” or “Scottish Bands”, say). With their back turned to their family who stand front of stage resting on a bar with back to the audience, their family must decide which category their teammate will play. They must discuss this without mentioning specific bands lest they get a ticking off from Byram. There was a fun discussion trying to disseminate what “glam” was without mentioning any of the bands.
  • Category chosen, the player will hear 12 seconds of a song. They are then asked if they know the title AND the artist, knowing that their answer must be exact. The jukebox will actually only ask for one of these things (locked in before the game) but the contestant will not know which until they decide to play the question. If either the title or artist is a bit fiddly, you can almost guarantee that will the one that will be asked for. If they go for it and get the question right then £2,000 is added to the round bank.
  • When I say fiddly I *mean* fiddly – for example in yer standard pub music quiz if you wrote “Never ever ever getting back together” for that Taylor Swift song you would likely get the credit which is not unreasonable given the lyric. Here that would be immediately classed as wrong (it’s only a single Ever in the title). Similarly you might think Single Ladies might be acceptable for that Beyonce song, but unless you’ve added (Put A Ring On It) you’re getting no money. For artists you need to watch you don’t miss out secondary people in collaborations. I do think this is rather detrimental to fun. It also adds an unnecessary amount of discussion time to each question when it needs to be a bit faster.
  • If  they aren’t sure of either, they can opt to go multiple choice (four options) but the money for the question is divided by 10 – i.e. £200. Astute players recognise that if you know either song or artist it’s positive expected value to just go for it and hope.
  • If they get it right a big tick appears on the screen and the audience are expected to get up and dance to an excerpt. If not then disappointment and a cross.
  • After five songs the contestant must take on the Jackpot Jukebox. The JJ has been preloaded with two tracks – tonight’s winning song which is Abba’s Money Money Money, and tonight’s losing song which is The Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want. For each correct answer the contestant gave the JJ will add another copy of ABBA to the playlist, for each wrong answer given, another copy of The Rolling Stones. So at the end of round one there are seven tracks on the playlist, you want more Money Money Money and fewer You Can’t Always Get What You Want. The JJ covers and shuffles them up (I don’t know if it’s possible to follow the shuffle) and you pick one of the seven track numbers.
  • Soon after, Byram will push the Play button. There will be a twenty second wait and then either ABBA or The Rolling Stones will play. If you as a contestant let the music play and it’s ABBA, you will bank the entire amount won in the round. However if it’s The Stones you will win nothing. BUT, you can choose not to hear the selected track by hitting the pause button during that twenty seconds but doing so will come at a cost – in round one this evening they took £2,400 through but the penalty would have been -£1,400, so a grand total of £1,000.
  • This bit is surprisingly well done and quite tense especially when played for larger amounts of cash later on. If they don’t pause then after the twenty seconds there’s a tense ZOOOOOMMMM sound effect before the JJ reveals which song has been selected. With proper money on the line it was properly exciting. If they win any money, it’s put in the Bank for later. After the round the Jukebox uncovers the playlist so we can see what the good and bad numbers were. Although as it’s all electronic, I expect someone will shout “fix!” at some point.
  • At no point is a contestant allowed to use the word “gamble”. They’ll refilm it asking you to use “risk”.
  • Round two is played the same as round one but you only get six seconds of each song but the money is bumped up to £3,000/£300.
  • The Jackpot Jukebox for round two includes the playlist for round one so now there will be twelve tracks to choose from, and the odds will have changed. I would be slightly worried that if the team got off to a bad start it will bring the energy of the whole down because they’ll pretty much always be on the back foot.
  • Interestingly with £3,300 on the line and a 6/6 good/bad split, the Jukebox offered an above mean £1,800 which they took (this is non TX so I’m not really spoiling). The split is shown at the bottom of the screen whilst they make their choice.
  • Round three has clips of songs that are only three seconds long, but each one is worth £5,000/£500. Again the results are added to the Jukebox playlist, and again they must decide whether to let the music play or not.
  • At this point the team had £19,400 in their bank. As a team they would play one final question with the person who hasn’t played a round acting as “leader”.
  • The fifteen screens light up with the fifteen categories that went unused. The Jukebox then selects one of them. The team will hear 3 seconds then must come up with both artist AND title. If they are right, their pot is doubled. If wrong then halved. The team can go multiple choice, but if they get it right they just keep the pot as is.
  • They then take on the Jackpot Jukebox one more time for the entire bank, and this time what they win they can take home. With a pot of £39,400, the team were offered £12,000 to bail out with a 11/7 good/bad split, so by no means an easy decision. They always frame it by first telling you what you’d lose if you pause.
  • It’s good fun – high shoutability factor, the clips are well chosen so that you can get them from the time given and no obscure tracks were used either. I say that as someone who is probably slightly above average at music quizzes, your mileage may vary.
  • I felt like there is too much chat during the questions and between questions. Naming tunes is fun, you will only be doing it sixteen times throughout the show because of Modern Dramatic Techniques.
  • Surprisingly I didn’t think Amanda Byram suited it. She was certainly in control, but I might have just misread natural exuberence but I thought she came across a bit too arch and insincere – that’s fine on Total Wipeout and The Big Breakfast,  I’m not quite convinced it suits family fun lottery quizzes.
  • In summary it does little original, in fact I don’t think it has any unique game mechanic. But I do think there is a decently watchable show here if the audience can get their head around the Jackpot Jukebox playlist.

Celebrity 15 to 1 films tonight

By | September 13, 2013

Unfortunately we’re not going to be there as we a) have something else on and b) hate travelling to Pinewood Studios (nothing says you hate audiences more than filming at Pinewood). However if you do go then do let us know what it’s like – although please avoid obvious spoilers as the show goes out next Friday night on Channel 4.

Tens of thousands of pounds are apparently on the line, so presumably they’re playing the final for cash for charity.

MEANWHILE Series 8 of Only Connect starts on Monday 23rd on BBC4. They are still after contestants for Series 9 (which according to rumour may or may not well go out on BBC2 – I’ve heard BBC4 might be looking for a new quiz, so.) and applications close for that on October 4th so get a move on.

FINALLY, it’s just three days to go until the new series of Bother’s Bar favourite Avanti un Altro!, and here is an amazing two minute promo for it which you might have to sit through a 30 second ad to get through first. The ending is funny.

Look out! Here comes a river of money!

By | September 12, 2013

Forget yer Million Second Quizzes, Challenge have re-acquired old Channel 5 show Whittle with Tim Vine. AMAZING. Don’t know when they’ll start going out though. Edit: Series 1 will go out in January.

Whittle was the daily low-rent version of Everybody’s Equal with Chris Tarrant where up to 100 people (depending if all the coach loads arrived) answer multiple choice questions being eliminated with wrong answers. The last one standing won £250 (“whoooo!”) and could win a further £250 by putting four things in order. If they failed, everybody in the audience playing along who got it correct split the money. It was basically a proto-Millionaire.

It was also a very popular daily show in France (under the title Que Le Meilleur Gagne and hosted by the ever popular Nagui), and was actually bought back last year as a 20 episode event with bigger money and studio but hasn’t been seen since.

Introducing the Ryan Seacrest Demographic Rating Hourglass (TM)

By | September 10, 2013

OK! Finally got round to watching the first episode of Million Second Quiz. As a live hour of television I thought it worked pretty well – Seacrest is a brilliant live host, the show felt fairly pacey – considering the quiz segment took up 1000 seconds of the hour (that’s just under 17 minutes, maths fans) I don’t think it dragged particularly, the filler felt relevant. The quiz bouts are fine – multiple choice questions, five seconds to answer, point values and question difficulties increase as the bout progresses, players have the option of forcing their opponent to answer to double the points which they can redouble back which adds a layer of bluff and strategy. There should be more questions ideally, it takes about 25-30 seconds to go through each one. These primetime bouts work slightly differently to the other ones played for the rest of the quiz, but that’s fine because you should make the TV broadcast a bit more special. And there is a sense of progression throughout the show so it builds up to a main match of the night, which is fine. It doesn’t explain itself very well but it’s for young people, so that’s fine.

So as a quiz it’s fine. But it’s not just a quiz, it’s a genre-redefining television event and here it falls down pretty comprehensively because they’ve made it very difficult to really care about the result – the streaming service refuses to show any streams of any of the actual off-primetime quiz bouts (the show’s big USP) instead serving up the Subway bar (when I tuned in earlier) (not a USP) or Winner’s Row (where you can watch people who you’ve seen for about twenty seconds on television and thus don’t really care about really). A genre-redefining thing is happening, we’re not going to let you in on it. The playalong app by the sounds of it doesn’t actually work, so that’s that sketch knackered then. As a contestant you can go and play but the challenge becomes increasingly daunting just to make the money. And anyway why should you care as a viewer? You’re not getting much in the way of journey, you’re getting an hour window each night of some people standing behind podiums pushing buttons. The TV show does a reasonable job of being a TV show (which is its primary purpose) but as a means of selling the event it’s not great at letting you buy into it.

But that’s not why we’re here, BIG THINGS were expected of Million Second Quiz (I keep wanting to write Million Dollar Quiz but never mind) and the hope and expectation is that the show would do well because it might kickstart other exciting event type shows, possibly or possibly not featuring television’s equivalent to the emperor’s new clothes SOCIAL MEDIA.

We were expecting this feature-ette to run and ru, but I'm afraid after three nights the public have drowned Ryan Seacrest. Drowned him in sand.

We were expecting this feature-ette to run and run, but I’m afraid after three nights the public have drowned Ryan Seacrest. Drowned him in sand.

To that end we have the Ryan Seacrest Demographic Rating Hourglass (TM). Unfortunately for Ryan, he’s found himself trapped in the bottom bulb of an hourglass. In the top bulb sand (people). We believe the viewers will start off high and dwindle and thus as the people (sand) falls, poor Ryan who is held in place by the Weight Of Expectation (TM) gets covered by sand (people) there is a real chance that he will asphyxiate, and as he does so the chance of the show getting picked up domestically or internationally unless it’s by a broadcaster with no real sense.

US TV is all about the 18-49 demographic. Last week in the timeslot American Ninja Warrior managed a 1.8/5 – which means 1.8% of households with 18-49 year old people in watched it, and 5% of the TV audience at the time.

I reckon to start with anything like a bang for the effort involved it would need at least a 2.0. It was up against a repeat of Shark Tank (Dragon’s Den) which according to TV By The Numbers got a 1.5.

It got a non-genre-redefining 1.7, apparently dropping to 1.6 after half an hour. And already we can see Seacrest is almost up to his neck in sand (people). We reckon it will be up to his mouth at 1.4. We will look upon the hourglass further as the event continues. Will Seacrest survive, or will he suffer a FATE WORSE THAN DEATH? The Million Second Quiz continues tonight.

Incidentally, we’re getting lots of hits for “do the losers take the money home on Million Dollar Quiz?” The answer is no, only the people in winner’s row and the person in the chair when the million seconds are up get to bank their cash and playoff for a $2m bonus.

Update: Oh dear, it’s not looking good for the genre-redefining phenomenon Ryan Seacrest, just a 1.5/5 on night two. We might be done with this feature-ette tomorrow. The sand (people) seems to have corroded some of the hourglass, look.

Update 2: Up against The X Factor (which itself is well down on last year) and Big Brother it got 1.2 on night three. What we have learnt is that MSQ has not redefined a genre, or perhaps it has redefined a different genre.