According to the normally reliable @tvscoops on Twitter, tomorrow there will be some sort of press reveal about Red or Black, Simon Cowell’s new big money game format. This is what has been revealed so far, it will be interesting to see how much of this has turned out to be accurate and if anything has changed:
- It’s going to be set in a stadium and will feature thousands of contestants. At one point there was a plan for some sort of pay-to-enter raffle to choose the contestants, although that’s gone a bit quiet.
- It will be stripped across the week.
- In each episode, several You Bet!-esque challenges will feature. The contestants must decide if the challenge will be completed or not. A correct answer means staying in the competition, a wrong answer means elimination. It’s sort of a bit like Ultra Quiz.
- However, what we do not know is if audience members are going to be assigned a response or whether they will get free will. The object is that at the end of the week one person will remain. Forced responses will get the numbers down quicker but will give rise to the suggestion that the ultimate winner doesn’t really deserve it, free will risks not getting the numbers down quick enough.
- Once the winner is found they simply have to guess whether a spin on a roulette wheel will end up red or black. Guessing correctly wins a million pounds.
- Ant and Dec are set to host.
I wasn’t initially all that enamoured with it – sure, it’s likely to get decent viewers for the final ten minutes but with so many contestants it’s going to be difficult to care about what’s happening for the first X-1 days. However I’ve since come to the conclusion that if the challenges are interesting and spectacular enough then it might be in with a chance if it can look and feel like event television and not, for example, Famous and Fearless. We’ll soon find out.
I did think of a (very!) vague way that the red/blacks could be evenly split yet still through a skill method; ask a question with various degrees of closeness to the correct answers, and assign people their choices, closest first. When there’s the right amount of one colour for 50%, the remaining people will all get the other colour; that gives a 50:50 split while allowing the majority to choose the colour they want.
That would be approximately fair, but it would be a monumental pain to actually explain this on the programme, of course. It does strike me, too, that that’s not a million miles away from the 101 Ways To Leave A Gameshow method, which is, well, hardly scintillating praise.
The show 2000-1 did something similar as its first round
Question with 4 answers and two right (two in this case with 1 right) and the contestants had to go into corresponding pen with the catch that all pens could only hold 500 people –
In other words – if more than half back it then speed of response counts
Almost right. The 2000 players were actually split into five groups of 400 people (with each group getting their own programme) and the one winner from each group meeting in the final on New Years Eve 1999 (I seem to recall).
The first phase in each group was to ask the 400 people a question with four answers (two correct, two incorrect) and had to grab one of 400 ‘key cards’, 100 enscribed with answer A, 100 with answer B, 100 with answer C and 100 with answer D, then go into the holding pen relating to the answer on their key card. Thus exactly 200 people got to carry on and (just as exactly) 200 were eliminated on the spot.
When the series was repeated as ‘1000 to 1’ a year or so later, this phase was removed and each of the five heats started with 200 players.
I’m sure the UKGS page could clarify, but that was my memory of it.
Yes, it’s an interesting idea but I can’t see it flying myself.
Launch event at 2:30pm apparently, so hopefully we will find out a few things then.
I think I remember seeing a clip of Japanese Ultra Quiz way back when where the first question took place at a baseball stadium in New York City. The contestants were told they had to come back by a certain time to sit in either the left or right outfield bleachers, which corresponded to different answers. In the meantime, they were free to roam the city, and even look up the answer/phone a friend. But once one set of bleachers was full, everyone else had to take the other set, making for an interesting balance of the temptation of spending time in a gorgeous city v. dedication to moving on in the game.
Well, it sounds like the top prize is going to be £7m. Seven nights at Wembley Stadium.
That’s a lot of money to give away in 7 hours. Very risky.
Yes, although it sounds likely to be a very difficult to attain top prize at the moment.
go into the red or black site, and its actually wembley arena, not stadium. far less impressive.
Sorry to be pedantic, but it’s called Red or Black, not Red and Black.
Yes indeed, changed thanks.
Why no love for xor in televisionland?
Good point. Very few people think that a right answer to A or B is “both”.
From Radio Times and The Guardian’s @timglanfield:
“From press release it sounds a bit like a cross between You Bet, Million Pound Drop & Deal or No Deal with Ant & Dec. Bingo!”
Press release out
http://www.itv.com/presscentre/pressreleases/programmepressreleases/redorblack/default.html
Bugger Uni exam on day of first round…
Ta for that.
7 x £1m then, and the way they’ve set it up sounds a bit less impressive that I had originally envisioned, as an ongoing week long event culminating building to one massive moment I was gearing up for, giving away a million a night is going to lose quite a lot of its appeal the second or third time you do it unless the show itself is amazingly hot… but there doesn’t seem to be that much sign of this being the case, a lot of it is going to be taken up by journey, which is fine, but it needs meat.
In fact the more I think about it, the more I think this should be a load of one-offs (Schlag den Raab style, possibly) and that stripping it through the week is going to work against it.
I’ve been wrong before, of course.
It needs meat? Al Murray’s Compete for the Meat is out in the next two weeks… maybe it should merge with that?
“No skill, no talent, just luck.”
Couldn’t they have saved all the expense and just tossed a coin a few times, then?
It’s going to be very difficult to construct events that genuinely come down to 50% chance (and so don’t involve ‘estimating likelyhood it will occur’ – Which is a skill), if that sentence is accurate…
I would expect each stunt to be practiced a lot and some sort of average taken as some sort of time to beat, although this in itself presents flaws (namely you’d expect people to get faster at something the more it is practiced).
Once again it is worth pointing out that luck-based shows are not particularly interesting in themselves, the whole reason Deal or No Deal is successful is because it’s about decisions and consequences and the drama of having to live with them.
If the tasks shown on RoB are You Bet style, it may have a chance as they may be interesting in their own right. If it is more the Banzai style “where will the toy Princess Diana on a parachute land?” then really who is going to care?
The stunts are going to be massive, never seen on TV before style stunts, according to Cowell.
Videos of the press conference are on Digital Spy: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a317610/simon-cowell-reveals-gambling-habits.html
Official site:
http://www.itv.com/redorblack/
I don’t understand why they’ve made it 7 nights long. Surely once someone wins the £1m in show 1 or show 2, then it renders the following 5 episodes pointless and people won’t watch them because the novelty’s gone. Terrible idea.
I don’t think it’s even giving it away that’s going to be an issue, it’s all about scarcity of opportunity – that’s what makes something exciting. I’m… a bit surprised.
What happens if it lands on green?
Simon Cowell says he spent 7 years working on this idea. Haha, what a waste of time. It’s a dud. He says he hopes it travels abroad, but how does he expect broadcasters internationally to pick up a show which has such a high budget? Especially in smaller territories, it’ll be impossible to make. At least with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, it was very rare for people to get to the £1m question. With this show, it’s a 50/50 chance of giving away a £1m per night. No way is it economical.
Here’s a concept – what if they rolled over the jackpot each night it wasn’t won? Biggest game show prize ever anyone?
That would be better. But £1 million budget per episode (probably higher with studio and production costs) is surely way too expensive? Not even the most expensive dramas these days cost that much to make.
The budget will be much more than £1 million. Obvivously, they need to pay for using Wembley Arena and also the crew to set up the cameras and rigging. It can be done as Must be the Music was filmed at Wembley Arena for the grand final.
Having 7 X £1 million is excessive. They could’ve adapted a PokerFace style tournament and have six winners, one per night to play for £1 million on the final night. An alternative would be to copy Millionaire have have one show every couple of months.
Also as it’s being a summer show, this is a massive risk as it might get figures in the high 5/6 million but around 3/4.
I have the feeling Cowell has deep enough pockets to sink £7 million (or perhaps more realistically, assuming 50/50 in the endgame, £3-4 million) and still make enough in advertising dollars to profit.
Remember it’s not just the expected £3.5m prize though, this is going to cost an absolute bomb to produce you’d have thought. Whether Cowell can afford it isn’t in question – of course he can. But if he wants to sell it elsewhere, can they afford it? Are advertisers really going to invest top dollar on something unproven?
In the interviews he didn’t seem overly confident they’d be able to sell it to too many territories although he said they’d try and do it in the US. It sounds like it will cost a massive amount to make. Each episode is going to be 90 minutes long apparently, and so if they give away an average of £500k per episode, it must be at least another £1-1.5m per episode to produce if not more, so it’s going to be megabucks. I’m surprised ITV are showing so much faith in it by giving it such a huge budget for its first run.
I agree with, well, everyone on this one. Brig’s specifics are certainly correct, obv., but there does seem to be an unusual degree of consensus otherwise.
It’s a shame that nobody seems to want any more imaginative solutions than “try throwing money at Simon Cowell, Ant and Dec”.
Well, I’ve just been over to the website, and I’ve come away with this opinion of how it’ll work.
Go to Wembley in June (and other places in regional heats) – get through to the live finals in September. To get through appears to be a 50/50 chance.
September – those through each night (around a couple of hundered) will, as part of a bigger group vote on the outcome of You Bet style challenges.
The outcome is probably going to be YES = Red / BLACK = NO, those correct in the prediction will go to vote on the next challenge through each show. By the end of each show, those still in will go through to the final show.
On last show of the week, those left in from each night, take part until they are down to 1 – and that will be a spin of a wheel for £1million on either Red or Black (and either the wheel won’t have a Green 0 – or if it does fall on 0 it’ll be a spin again)
Also doubters – if £1m is being played for, ITV will insist on the mysterious ‘independent adjudicators’ being present to insure fair play.
That’s how I read it…
No, they’re definitely spinning for a £1m each episode. There will be 8 contestants in each live show who will take part in tasks. The best person will spin for £1m. That same process happens every night for 7 days.
No, it’s definitely 7x£1m, it says so on the press release.
For people who still can’t understand the concept, Cowell, Ant and Dec have explained it in this video interview: http://www.itv.com/yorkshire/red-or-black85374/
They also give hints on what the games are going to be.
So from what I gather here is how each episode will work:
-Round 1: Held at Wembley with roughly 1,000 contestants to be whittled down.
-Round 2: Held at different locations across the country, with people once again trying their luck, and at the end of this round only 7/8 (conflicting reports) people will remain (how they’ll get to 7/8 I have no idea but I assume they’ve got something worked out).
-Round 3: Live in the studio. Final rounds until just 1 contestant remains, and they could win £1m.
Obviously the finer points of the format haven’t been announced yet but I think it’ll either be huge event TV or die on its arse. This has Cowell involved who doesn’t do things on a small scale, and as has been discussed already it sounds like it’s being done on a huge budget, so if they can use the money to make the games huge and exciting then I think they could be on to a winner.
At a guess I suspect it’ll be airing in late August/early September, perhaps starting over the Bank Holiday weekend at the end of August.
Here is an interesting thing: they say “if your luck holds out ten times in a row, you win a million pounds”.
What if nobody’s luck holds out until the final game?
Actually that’s quite interesting – your odds on picking a fifty fifty correct seven times in a row is 1 in 1024. With 7,000 starters there’s your seven winners right there (although presumably you’d need to get it right an 11th time to win the million?). But again, this suggests exactly half will go on each stunt which also suggests you won’t be picking the result.
I’d imagine that there’ll be precisely 1024 contestants per show and exactly half of those remaining will be eliminated at each stage. That seems like the only realistic way of ensuring that exactly one person remains at the end of it all.
Personally, I’m hoping for two big circles on the floor at one end of the arena, one red and one black. Each circle is big enough to hold precisely 512 people. The players will then have to do a Runaround style sprint from one end of the arena to the other to get to the colour they want to pick before it gets filled up, possibly involving Mario Kart style weapons to trip the front runners up.
Can we please commission Mario Kart as a game show? Why has this not happened yet?
Blue bloody shells. That’s why.
Or, perhaps, there will be nine elimination rounds to eliminate 512 down to one, and the tenth test of luck will be the spin for a million. Hmm, trying to get nine interesting elimination rounds into a single show seems like quite a squash unless they’re prepared to make it (almost?) as long a show, per episode, as some of the flabbier episodes of The X Factor. Assuming a prize budget of £1,000,000 * 18/37 per show, probably better to spend high-six-digits per episode on episodes of a two-hour show than on episodes of a one-hour show.
Completely unrelatedly, remember that BBC talent show we heard about some time ago and pegged as You Bet with The Bong Game tacked on the end? This source suggests the show is to be named “Epic Win” (which, as self-defeating, self-denying names goes, is almost down there with “Remotely Funny”). Jason Byrne to host; Joe Swash, Roisin Conaty and Micky Flanagan to judge, prize money to be in the range of zero to £3,000 per contestant.
*BONG*
Or, perhaps, there will be nine elimination rounds to eliminate 512 down to one, and the tenth test of luck will be the spin for a million.
That has been initimated and yet I don’t think so – they’ve revealed 7,000 contestants for the whole thing to begin with and Joe with his insider knowledge has suggested eight people will make each live show.
So for each show this should make, effectively (Round locations may vary):
Red or Black Arena
——
Round 1 – 1,024 contestants to 512
Round 2 – 512 to 256
Round 3 – 256 to 128
Round 4 – 128 to 64
Local Venue
——
Round 5 – 64 to 32
Round 6 – 32 to 16
Round 7 – 16 to 8
Live in the studio
——
Round 8 – 8 to 4
Round 9 – 4 to 2
Round 10? – 2 to 1
This is, of course, complete speculation.
Alright, I’ve went for a walk this evening. The more I think about it, the more flaws I can see.
For example, for the idea of democracy the show puts forward, that anyone could be a contestant, that’s everyone except all of those who can’t make it to Wembley for time/expense purposes. So don’t expect too many from further afield. Presumably they’re going to go after 1,000 for each potential local round, so there’s also more expense of time and money incurred travelling to those. It might get to the point where the Scottish may as well just invest in lottery tickets. Booking in advance on the train, Edinburgh to London Kings Cross return is about £115, and that doesn’t include any hotel or expenses you might incur.
I remain convinced this would better served as a number of one-offs throughout the year where it can renew its buzz.
AND YET. AND YET and yet and yet… my subconcious refuses to write this thing off. It’s almost so ridiculous and ambitious I’d like to see them pull it off. So.
Mmm – It is the sort of bombastic audacity I don’t recall ITV doing for many a year…
Indeed, it’s a high risk programme to try to make, so I’m not writing it off until I’ve seen it.
Clearly to me it looks like ITV are pumping bag loads of money into this hoping that it gets picked up in America. If it gets picked up in America, ITV Studios will be getting a big cut from the millions of dollars the US networks will be spending on this. That’ll be more than enough to cover the high costs of the UK version. The key here is to pump as much money into the first series as possible, get good ratings, get picked up in the US and that will more than cover the costs of the UK version, if not bring a tidy profit to Syco and ITV Studios. A very risky game but if it pays off they’ll be into mega bucks.
No way would ITV have ordered this show if it had been a sole indie production. They know with ITV Studios onboard co-producing this show they have the possibility of earning big bucks from America. Paying £1.5m per show for a format they don’t co-own would not have made this show possible. The fact they co-own this show is the main reason they’re pumping all this money into it.
It’s going to be a massive set too, which I expect other broadcasters to use as a base like Wipeout in Argentina and Cube in Fountain.
Erm, but they own the Argentina site. They don’t own Wembley Arena.
Shows often get into trouble when they use a set that’s big. Crystal Maze famously had to establish a brand new TV studio at North Weald airport when it was discovered that series 2 couldn’t be filmed in the UK because both of the (only) two studios in the UK that could take the set were fully booked.
And a friend of mine once had to saw off 6 feet of his own set when it changed studio!
You can’t give the name of the show that was for, can you?
Don’t see why not – it was In the Dark. i.e. the Julian Clary show, but this was an international edition. It was quite successful abroad.
That’s interesting – whereabouts?
I don’t remember exactly which territory – there were about 35 in all: mostly Eastern Europe and Latin America but I think it was quite popular in Spain, Italy and Russia.
I can’t help but think if it’s going to be logistically difficult in the UK, in the US doing this with the same effect is going to be a complete nightmare.
Yes, if you want a mix of people from around America in each show, the travel costs for the US contestants (whether borne by the contestants or the production company) will be enormous. Let’s say 2000 people at $500 per flight = $1 million in flights alone!
The only other way of doing it would be to hold each of the shows in a different football stadium but then you have relocation costs that’s just as expensive.
In the UK, you could easily arrange coaches from key points around the country to ship people in. That’s what they did with 1v100.
It’d be nice if they did that, but currently you’re doing everything at your own expense. Hopefully someone will see sense at some point.
I would guess, but I don’t know, that with seven local venues and with seven episodes, each episode is going to take the last eight from each local round. In that case a geographical mix isn’t something they’re aiming for.
Although living in Cambridge and with no idea where the local round is going to be I’ve no idea whether it would be best to go for the South, Midlands or London application.
The only way this can *really* work is if the prize is, in fact, A Big Surprise.
I expect there will be Major Disappointment.
And not forgetting all the people who will have A Bit Of A Wasted Journey.
(…No. Seriously – I haven’t been able to shake ‘…Isn’t this going to be Fluke on a high budget without the puns’ since they’ve said that it’s not just going to be the end game that’s a 50/50 gamble)
Boiled down to its basics, this is Justin Lee Collins’ Heads or Tails redux. Or, yes, Fluke crossed with Simon Cowell’s Ego. The interest is going to be in how the answers are generated, and I hope that it’s more compelling than Magic Numbers from last summer.
This is going to be event television, either because it’s absolutely brilliant, or because it’s so naff it becomes a spectacle. The fact that it’s a programme for the south-east doesn’t help, the centre of population gravity for the UK is (if I recall correctly) somewhere between Lichfield and Derby. Was the NEC fully booked that week?
Turning to possible air dates. I think ITV doesn’t have rights to show the England men’s football team match in Bulgaria on 2 September; they certainly have rights to the match against Wales on the 6th. That suggests seven days in the bank holiday week from 27 August to 4 September, just right for ITV to distinguish between their summer and autumn schedules. Alternatively, seven days between their football commitments on the 14th and 28th, but that risks the BBC counter-programming with a Strictly gala.
The centre of the UK is supposed to be Meriden, about 3 miles down the A45 from the NEC. And at the NEC during September, the Red Or Black finals week could have been tx’ed live from there.
http://www.necgroup.co.uk/whatson/september.htm
Only Lee Evans in the LG Arena on the 2nd September would get in the way.
Of course, there would be a good way for ITV to recover some of the costs – and that’s to have the shows sponsored by someone like Virgin Trains, and as part of the deal offer cheap price tickets to all contestants heading towards Wembley…
..But it won’t. Bet it’ll be sponsored by some website of gambleage which has a casino subsite they wont to flog.
By the way, what price on this show becoming the first major ITV entertainment show to fully go smashing in on the dreaded ‘P’ logo of product placement hell?
I know ‘want’ is spelt with an ‘a’..
It’s been a long day..
the wembley dates are the 11th and 12th june. i assume the live studio bits will be at some dull studio.