Simon Cowell leaves American Idol…

By | January 11, 2010
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… to launch a US version of The X Factor for FOX in 2011. If you thought the UK version was OTT…

Our fave comment comes from Grace Dent on Twitter: “loving American tweets saying ‘Wow! Cowell is quittin Am Idol and starting X factor! So glad to see the back of this format!’

Digital Spy report that Paula Abdul might be a judge (which would be absolutely terrific as an opposing mentor), along with Cheryl Cole, and that Dermot O Leary might host. Basically nobody really knows anything for a show that isn’t going to be on for another year anyway.

Round-up 11th Jan ’10 feat. Spammety Spam

By | January 11, 2010
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Yo dudes,

After a spam attack last night, I’ve just installed an Anti-spam device, please give me a shout by e-mail if you think it’s not letting something through you think ought to go through. I won’t be able to correct it until the evening, but still.

Here is a not especially revealing interview with Nigel Lythgoe in Mediaguardian.

Excitingly, it looks like the Celebrity Big Brother housemates are doing a Countdown themed task this afternoon.

Board of Not Much Excitement 10-16th Jan 2010

By | January 10, 2010
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OK producers, you can stop F5-ing now, it’s finally time to take a look at the pick of the week. And to be honest, it’s rather slim pickings this week. Don’t forget, this is an entirely subjective view of what I’m most interested in watching from the gameshow world this week:

  • Only Connect (Monday, BBC4, 8:30pm) series opener got great viewing figures last week despite University Challenge overrunning and nobody really knowing it was on. This week, our cleverly chosen diametrically opposed types as Polymaths vs Strategists.
  • The Krypton Factor (Tuesday, ITV1, 7:30pm) which rather upsettingly just about gets away with dropping the intelligence test. Note: please don’t take this as positive reinforcement.
  • Schlag den Raab (Saturday, ProSieben, 7:15pm) – a late edit, I’ve just discovered the next one is on Saturday, for €1.5m. Fingers crossed for naughty streaming, everybody.

Rather brilliantly, that appears to be pretty much it. Popstar to Operastar which begins on Friday night on ITV1 (9pm) is on if you like that sort of thing, I’ll probably pass to be honest. But if they called it Popestar to Operastar, featuring people who failed to become Pope then I might be bought. Winningly, after last week’s Awards Show and despite series three being in the can, BBC1 decide to repeat series two of Total Wipeout from next Saturday. And I’ve not mentioned So You Think You Can Dance? on here yet which I watched the first bit of last Saturday and thought was OK but not really my sort of thing. On Wednesday at 11:30pm Channel 4 are showing Kaun Banega Crorepati aka Who Wants to be a Millionaire? India Edition to tie in with their broadcast of not-as-feelgood-as-the-posters-would-have-had-you-believe Slumdog Millionaire.

I have yet to watch Take Me Out, but confidently predict it isn’t as good as Man O Man with Chris Tarrant. I will watch a recording some time this week.

And that’s all the weather!

I’ve finished the Bother’s Bar Deal or No Deal World Tour on the Specials board this evening also.

In  future thrills, Relic (the show Codex really probably should have been) with kids solving mysteries in the British Museum to avoid being incarcerated forever, starts on 21st January.

Specials Board

By | January 9, 2010
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I’m halfway through putting up the articles on versions of Deal or No Deal from around the world. The rest will go uo tomorrow. Alongside… THE BOARD OF EXCITEMENT!

Round-up 7th Jan ’10

By | January 7, 2010
17 Comments

Let’s have another Round-up. What’s on your mind?

I am quite excited about the prospect of Tim Westwood entering Celebrity Big Brother. I think if he does it, he’s got a massive chance of winning.

Meanwhile, sticking to Celebrity Big Brother, this evening I watched last night’s episode with Vinnie trapped in a phone booth because it sounded like an interesting task. Now for a game of “when press releases don’t quite match up to the reality,” we’re trying to find the quotes on the official site but that seems to be down so I’m going to take them from Inside Big Brother, quoting from the official site:

Speaking to the Big Brother website, task producer Ben Riley said: “It’s going to be dark and devious. There’s a real theme: Hell Lies in Others. It’s going to be exciting.”

He then explained that the task was based on “big American movies like Saw and Phone Booth” and it would be the largest scale task in Big Brother history.

Riley teased: “We might see some conflict, falling out and maybe a bit of manipulation.”

So with that you’d expect something with a bit of menace, oppression and excitement. What we actually got was celebrity maths, Stephanie Beecham sticking hands up some chickens (with gloves, mind) and some very mild practical jokes. The biggest task in Big Brother history? Disappointing.

Meanwhile details of ITV’s answer to the question “how can we fill up our PSB arts quota now The South Bank Show has finished whilst making lots of money?” Popstar to Operastar have been released, featuring as it does Myleene Klass and Alan Titchmarsh – together at last – as hosts and Darius off of Pop Idol as a contestant. And Marcella Detroit from Shakespeare’s Sister. Hmm. We probably won’t be going out of our way to watch this in honesty, although if someone from ITV wants to promise us that Darius will be doing an operatic version of Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time I could be persuaded otherwise.

Update: And the new housemate is, in fact, Ivana Trump. Sad face.