This might be worth keeping an eye on, a new webseries “inspired” by The Genius and starring noneother than Ben Justice off of behind the scenes of gameshows and that.

Saturday night on Pointless Celebs, the introduction of an idea I heard was happening a while ago, sounded absolutely awful then, is absolutely awful in reality… it’s the £500 Triple Pointless Final bonus!

I get why they want to shy away from doubling or tripling the jackpot if you give two or three Pointless answers in the final – if the jackpot goes into five figures, you’re on the hook for £30, £40, £50k every episode until it gets won which doesn’t *sound* like a lot of money, but actually that’s how much it would cost to make two episodes – it’s actually not small beer in BBC daytime terms. But £500 for a triple Pointless is not only anticlimactic (you’ve won a four figure sum! Let’s see if you’ve won FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS more!), it is actively insulting for the object achieved, and the amount it has happened, so much so in fact that it’s less insulting to not offer it as has been the case for over a decade now.

You want to make the Triple Pointless something people might talk about? Offer a telephone box sized Pointless Trophy. Maybe one the size of a bollard for a Double Jackpot.

Spotted this on SRO Audiences just now:

Lucky 13 is a brand new high-stakes primetime quiz format from the team who introduced the world to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. 

13 contestants will be hoping luck is on their side as they battle for a place on the hotspot. They must answer 13 true or false questions for the chance to win a jackpot prize. To win big, they won’t even need to answer all of the questions correctly. To win anything, however, they’ll need to guess how many questions they’ve answered correctly. 

The show records on Sunday 2nd & Monday 3rd April 2023 at Dock10, MediaCity, Manchester.

If you would like to join us for an evening of fun and excitement, then apply now via this listing!

We are also taping an episode of this show in german on Tuesday 4th April. If you would like to apply for that episode, then please apply via the listing below.

Sounds a liiiiittle bit like a reversioning of international Millionaire spin-off non-hit 50:50, or the endgame of that anyway. Anyway if you go, tell us what it’s like.

Some dates:

• March 11th – it’s Schlag den Star! It’s Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten star Jeanette Biedermann against TV presenter Janin Ullmann battling it out for Elton’s €100,000 briefcase. We’ll be watching it on the Discord from 7:15pm UK.
• March 18th – Challenge Anneka‘s BACK! On Five, from 8:50pm.
• March 19th – DE MOL.
• March 19th – Rise and Fall on Channel 4, starts at 9pm and then 10pm most nights for the following three weeks, which feels brave. A power struggle where Grafters live in the basement and earn prizemoney and try to replace the Rulers living a luxury life in the penthouse. Greg James hosts.
• March 20th – Eggheads is BACK! with new episodes on Five.
• March 22nd – The long-awaited return of Race Across The World, on a Wednesday which is going to be weird! Also on BBC1. And they’re basically travelling across Canada.

This week’s BIG NEWS is the new 10:30 music quiz replacing Popmaster on Radio 2 with Ken Bruce off to Greatest Hits Radio, Gary Davies trialling it today.

From the press release:

On Monday 6 March at 10.30am, Gary Davies launches Radio 2’s brand new weekday pop quiz – Ten to the Top, an accumulator quiz where it pays to answer the questions correctly in order. Ten to the Top will test our listeners’ music knowledge as they battle for pop supremacy.

• Each player will be asked 10 questions about pop music.
• Question 1 is worth 1 point if answered correctly, question 2 is worth 2 points, question 3 is worth 3 points, all the way up to 10.
• However, if a question is answered incorrectly the value of the following question goes back to 1 point again, then the next question is 2 points if answered correctly, and so on.
• Each contestant has a Joker to play, and for that question they’ll get double points if it’s answered correctly.
• The player with the most points wins a smart speaker, and if it’s a draw there will be a tie-breaker question.

I haven’t heard it yet and can’t listen until this evening, but here are my main thoughts going by that:

• I get why they’ve done it – feels a bit like Champions League Popmaster, adds a bit of jeopardy, but that feels like a lot of numbers to have to keep track of – question number, value of question, total score. On TV there are visual means to do so, on radio that’s going to sound quite complex.
• The joker gives a distinct disadvantage to playing first if the second caller can hear how the first player got on. You don’t have to make a decision, the first player has effectively set a target for when you need to play it.
• If you’re playing along at home and want to compare scores with others, are you meant to use the points the radio contestant is playing for or are you meant to keep your own accurate reading as if you were playing for real? How many are going to do that?

I suspect nobody is going to like it today, but it’s got a month to bed in before Ken starts up again and perhaps people will warm to it. What did you think?