Blimey.
- Epic Win – 5:25pm, BBC1
- All Star Family Fortunes – 6:05pm, ITV1. This week it’s Joe McElderry vs Jo Joyner.
- Strictly Come Dancing Launch Show – 6:10pm, BBC1
- Red or Black? – 7pm and 9:15pm, ITV1. Last in the series, and will probably get a fillip given that a) it’s again scheduled around The X Factor and b) One Direction are on tonight and it’s already trending.
- Secret Fortune – 8pm, BBC1
- The X Factor – 8:15pm, ITV1.
- The Million Pound Drop – Live! 9:15pm, C4. Tonight featuring Vernon Kay!
And that’s all the weather!
Endemol had a combined 8 million viewers last night at 9.30pm. Thank you everyone for your support 🙂
Didn’t watch either show. You wouldn’t want to know what I watched between 8.30pm and 10pm.
I’ve spoken before about how All Star Family Fortunes succeeds in getting worse each year.
Last year, of course, it was so bad that it was almost painful to watch… 👿 🙁
Surely this trend couldn’t go on?!
Well, guess what, it looks like it hasn’t. 😯
At first glance, this year’s series is hardly better than last year’s (though the fifth family members do get to face off now), but it doesn’t appear to be any worse, either.
But I still have gripes as regards the answers to the questions…
According to William G Stewart, 100 people really were surveyed for each question during the Bob and Max years – and, of course, it’s very difficult to disagree with the words of a person like WGS. One assumes that it was the same for the Les years, too.
But on ASFF, it doesn’t feel like this is the case – especially during Big Money.
Why? Firstly, it happens all too often that the five top answers total in the region of 190 points – and on at least two occasions they have totalled 199.
Compare this to the Les years, when it was not uncommon for them to total only around 170-180.
And secondly, I’ll never forget when Louisa Lytton was asked “Name a British airport” and her answer of Heathrow was only worth around 20 points – the top answer being, believe it or not, Manchester. Surely Heathrow is the best known, followed by Gatwick??!?! 😯 👿
So, unless someone can confirm that ASFF staff really do survey 100 people for every question, I’m going to continue smelling fish…
Perhaps they asked 100 people who where in Manchester airport?
No fakery goes on in Family Fortunes. The questions are often asked by surveys to extras working on Coronation Street.
That would tie in with the Manchester thing.
But then how come the five top answers in Big Money total in the region of 190 points so, so often, with at least two instances where they totalled 199? 😕 😕 😕
As I said, in the Les years, it was not uncommon for them to total only around 170-180…
And if they really do just ask extras on Corrie, then asking them to name a British airport wasn’t a good idea, was it? 🙄
I don’t think your evidence proves anything other than the producers may cherry pick questions in order to get more winners.
Should they ask a broader spectrum of people? Probably. Does it really matter while it’s currently getting 6m and costs about 20p to make? Probably not.
They should what they used to do back in the 1980s and 1990s. Where the 100 people survey was actually the contestants on the show. Since there are five in a family. They only need ten famillies to answer a number of questions and swap them round so they don’t have them on their show.
I make it 10 shows. Though you need at least 11 shows worth of families so that you can swap properly. Still – A sensible system that would prevent the bias that apparently currently permiates the surveys.
This happened during the Les Dennis era, and happens sometimes on US Family Feud too. Sometimes people don’t come up with an answer I believe and just get left out of the total.
To be honest I tried to watch it tonight and found it a little tedious, especially with the hour long format.
Then again, I now have access to Challenge and the good old days of Les Dennis so maybe I’m a little biased 😀 and Vernon needs to go back to presenter school, as he forgot to actually reveal the missing top answer to the last question in the Big Money round!
On a unrelated note…On the MPD intro Davina says “The money has been counted and escorted into studio”. Is it just me or is there a ‘the’ missing in that line?!
I don’t think Vernon’s ever been to presenting school. 😉
What about the guy on Red or Black who says “eight made it to studio” and “the lucky few made it to studio”. Mabye both people have been up north for far too long???
Victoria Coren has quite a lovely piece in today’s Observer about quiz show contestants and the idiots who attack them.
Includes possibly the best thing said about Nathan Hageman so far.
“Although it would be illogical to argue that [Nathan] shouldn’t be allowed to win the money, it doesn’t seem fair that he did… one certainly doesn’t warm to the geezer, but nobody said you had to be a good person to get lucky on a game show. They’re not about rewarding virtue.”
Of course, this gets into the question of whether game shows should be about rewarding virtue, and indeed how virtue in this context is defined – we’ve had entire formats devoted to just that concept, and I would argue that everything that’s wrong with Deal or No Deal can be traced to its attempts to define what makes a virtuous contestant. With games of essentially pure skill, like OC, the virtue is very clearly defined as ability in the tasks. Games of pure luck are another matter, and games that are mostly pure luck – DoND being one – are in a particular quandary…