• The Voice is on, and so is the Britain’s Got Talent Final. How will they hilariously spin the ratings?
• Scream Extreme starts tomorrow on Watch at 8pm, which is like normal Scream If You Know The Answer but set in America.
• It’s round 10 of the Bother Series of Poker Sunday night at 8pm. £5.50 to enter, do come and join us.
• Meanwhile Fort Boyard 2012 details are slowly being drip fed out and it all sounds very exciting, this year looks like it’s going to be similar to last year in terms of rules but with many more ideas in terms of room theming. This forum thread is worth keeping an eye on. Pictures start page 8 or so. One new game seems to involve a coffee perculator. Filming starts in a fortnight.

Hello, sorry I’ve been doing a work thing the last few days.

The Million Pound Drop won best gameshow at the Rose d’Or last night, beating off The Cube and Still Standing. The Jack Whitehall episode, by the sounds of it. So well done them.

And now a tangentally related thing, I’ve been on XBox Live for a couple of years now, and absolutely one of the best things on it was their Inside XBox stuff fronted by Dan Maher and Andy Farrant. They might have silly haircuts, but they developed shows which were inventive and funny on a budget of 12p, and now as part of a Microsoft repositioning thing they’ve been sacked.

What I am basically suggesting that if anyone from telly is reading, you could do a lot worse then give these a guys a chance.

With thanks to the guy who put it up:

Here is basically the issue with it – it’s based on the very successful French reimagining of the format, but that itself was built seemingly from the ground up as a vehicle for Vincent Lagaf. Once you take Lagaf and his creative direction out of the equation, what you have is a massive hole to fill, which everything here fills in awkwardly. Emdur’s a great old school host but he does not suit this show’s direction particularly, and the rapport between host and co-host that’s central to the French version is just not really here here.

The French show plays with nostalgic elements and will do something new with them, here the showcase feels like a throwback because they can’t think of anything better. Shame really.

The way the prize cue has got whistling in it but shies away from using the French theme is mildly amusing.

The Gameological Society are doing a regular feature on UK shows from a basically intelligent American perspective. First up: Pointless.

Well look, I don’t really watch either The Voice or Britain’s Got Talent but you can’t have failed to notice that one is doing rather better than the other. And it’s no good pretending that these two shows aren’t in competition and are after different audiences when production people are gleefully tweeting figures when The Voice was doing better. And obviously it is funny when people use “peak” and “share” because that often means they’re hiding something.

Last night’s The Voice results show got a little over 6.5m viewers, almost 40% down on the show’s audition highs. The previous week Countryfile managed over seven million. That means The Voice is now OFFCIALLY less cool than John Craven. The fact that The Voice loses significant viewers between performance show and results show is just another more credible way it differentiates itself from The X Factor.

We are constantly informed that “well, the live shows lose viewers internationally as well” in a way the makers of the show seem quite proud about – a fun feature, even! Well how stupid is that? Evidently there is a format issue and it needs fixing.

So obviously given the blind audition bits are the most popular, have twelve of those followed by a massive Eurovision style sing-off. Format sorted, cheque please.

Whatever you’re doing this Bank Holiday Weekend have a good one! I’m working.

Still, tonight we have a free game of limit 7 card Stud starting at 8pm, that’s open to everybody so do come and join us.

Probably the best thing on Bank Holiday Monday is CITV are running an entire day of Fort Boyard: Ultimate Challenge. No word if they’re filming any more of those yet, from the scheduling I get the feeling it’s been rather more successful in the UK than it has in the US.