Tonight at 8:35pm before the England vs Norway match they’re showing a ten-minute preview of upcoming Saturday night reality show The Box with Gary Lineker, to give everyone a chance to write it off early presumably. Boxsen is in fact a Norwegian format so that is some fun synergy they’re probably not going to mention.
I’ve seen a bit of Boxsen and it’s… fine – celebs doing a variety of physical and mental tasks, the idea being they’ve got to figure out what needs doing and quickly get on with it, sometimes the situations they find themselves in are surprising (on top of a tower! In the middle of an ice hockey game!). Like every new Next Big Thing show I struggle to see it being the next big thing – it’s had some success in other Scandinavian countries but done rather less well in Benelux countries I understand. What NTA Best Host Gary Lineker is going to bring to proceedings I don’t know.
Edit: Also a repeat before France vs Spain coverage on Tuesday just before 7pm. About an hour before the game actually starts.
Sounds like this did 1.6m on the night, which hardly seems worth bothering. It was about 90 minutes before the match.
It was amusing how the graphics and music package basically probably made most of the (totally sober of course) audience think ‘oh they’ve managed to sign up Gary Lineker and a few other random celebs for I’m A Celebrity this year then’
Promoting it with an extended trailer I guess is down to a lot of ITV’s new shows in recent years failing from the off, maybe a theory that not enough people knew about them and that’s why they flopped. A small factor I think but as it’s more difficult for shows to break through nowadays it’s worth doing. Previewing it before the football makes sense when the show is presented by Gary Lineker and they also have Graeme Souness in there, which will appeal to the footy audience.
I may watch some, mostly the Souness bits, but it’s not a gamechanger for me.