Join Lewis Ogbajoj, myself and David Howell for some gameshow discussion. This was a lot of fun to do, and Lewis is a great host, I hope you enjoy it:
SHOW NOTES EPISODE 1
Guests:
Nick Gates aka Brig Bother – http://twitter.com/BothersBar
David Howell – http://twitter.com/shinydh
Notes:
– This one was recorded on mp3 skype recorder – technical errors prevented the preferred recording method of everyone recording individual parts on audacity and me syncing them later. Hopefully subsequent episodes will be higher quality. That said, mp3 skype recorder didn’t do a bad job this time, primarily due to the call being mostly stable.
– Baggage is on 4od at http://bit.ly/SN4F15
– Pointless at SRO Audiences – http://www.sroaudiences.com/application.asp?show_id=788
– The Chase US pilot write-ups by myself and David – https://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=5723
– Schlag den Raab commentary by everyone – https://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=6257&cpage=1#comments
– Stand Out from the Crowd write-up by Nick – https://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=6255
– I realised long after recording that since there’s the £100 seeding the pot at the start, the maximum amount you can win on SOFTC by getting one question correct (and being very lucky) is £50,100, narrowly beating Secret Fortune in questions-to-cash ratio.
– Email is fifty50show@gmail.com and twitter is http://twitter.com/Fifty50show (my personal twitter is http://twitter.com/ogbajoj )
About to listen – looking forward to it.
I’ve just been watching Baggage – apart from the lighting, all was well until the reveal of the original chooser’s baggage, when they effed everything up and produced what can only be described as Weaver-bait. It pretty much strips the original choosee of any agency at all, turning it from “Can we make this work out despite our flaws?” to “Guess what major problem “the hottie” has and win a romantic holiday with him!”. The point of the final reveal is supposed to mske the choice mutual, not to turn it into some kind of guessing game and strip the other person of any choice…
Not having any experience of the US version, I couldn’t comment on that. Not having seen Friday’s show, my guests couldn’t comment either!
Though I did find it a bit weird, that it comes down to “get it right, and you win, get it wrong, and you’ve accused them of (for example, using one of the actual options) being a stalker”.
From my memory of the original, the original choosee is then presented with an item of the original chooser’s baggage, and then they have to choose whether to accept it or not. This flips it round quite neatly, gives the person being chosen at least a bit of agency, and doesn’t attempt to make the chooser seem like a “prize” while admitting that they actually have serious flaws. It’s a weird change and it feels tacked on – the date isn’t referred to as a prize until that point, nor is it referred to as something you have to win, and suddenly it’s become an attempt at a proper game show. I guess Gok’s already wearing the sparkly jacket…
“Weaver-bait”? I’m flattered! Primarily that anyone would think that producers make programmes purely to annoy me, for I am but a humble spear-carrier. Based on the first episode, Baggage is heading towards a poor review, but not solely because of its endgame.
Indeed, I’ve been thinking about the Hall o’Shame for the end of year poll, and I could easily fill out the ballot with Channel 4 programmes. In fact, I could fill out the ballot with Channel 4 programmes and not mention The Bank Job, such has been the standard this year.
Just listened to the first episode – enjoyed it a great deal. One possible other anti-climax fixer for SOFTC would be to have the Danger Ball questions get more difficult depending on when it’s picked – the more the contestant gambles, the more difficult it would be to get out. Functionally, this means you have to be pretty terrible to fail on round one, and the cost of playing on increases by more as you go on – if you’ve got nine regular balls and two danger balls, there’s not actually all that much of an increase in probability of being stuffed in the first couple of questions.
The podcast feels like it could do with some kind of end segment – I listen to NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, which ends with each panellist nominating what’s made them happy this week. Can I suggest an end section where you each suggest one particular bit of a game show format (e.g. giant inflatables, red boxes, Richard Osman) you’d like to see more of? Actually, come to think of it, you could just call it “We’d Like To See More Of” and be done with it. Otherwise it’s an excellent round-up, and please do keep the statistical dorkery.
Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it, I’ve been getting generally positive feedback which is making me feel pretty good.
Thanks for the suggestion too, I’ll think about adding that. I’ve got a couple of stock questions I’ve wanted to ask guests/interviewees anyway, so maybe one of those, maybe yours, maybe a rotation, I just don’t know.
One possible other anti-climax fixer for SOFTC would be to have the Danger Ball questions get more difficult depending on when it’s picked – the more the contestant gambles, the more difficult it would be to get out.
I quite like that (it crossed my mind on the night as well), although Danger balls don’t get replaced when drawn so I think it’d need a slight retwiddling.
Well this is a splendid development and no mistake.
I thought the format was very good, all in all – essentially it was a number of ‘matters arising’ in the style of the TV reviews slot on the Richard Bacon radio show, and that works well because you can stay topical whilst allowing small tangents. The different sections of the conversation were clearly signposted and even the tricky 3-way chat worked despite the distance issues.
While you could enforce more of a structure onto it, I think it depends who the guests are. The topics chosen on this episode made especially good use of the experiences and knowledge of the guests. I suppose it might be nice to have a wider blue-sky topic in there that might cut across different programmes or sub-genres, but this episode already covered Europe, UK, US, past, present and future shows, so that’s a goodly mixture for anyone.
Hope there’s another one soon!
There were a couple of “no you first” moments, although Lewis has skillfully edited them out.
I look forward to an invite back at some point. And if anyone reading sees @ogbajoj or @Fifty50Show asking for contributors then go for it!
Very enjoyable – and remarkably on-topic. (Possibly erring on the side of being disappointingly on-topic, but it’s only episode one!)
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s enough material to sustain a show every week, but there are certainly enough people to interview. Fingers crossed for getting people In The Biz, from round the world etc. on at some point down the line.
*subscribes*
Very enjoyable podcast there, Lewis. You all had very interesting things to say about the topics you talked about, especially SdR as it was almost certainly one of the best episodes we’d seen for a good while.
I’ll definitely listen again next week and keep an eye out for any calls to be a guest. At the moment, I’m keeping an eye on the UKGS page to see when Series 2 of Breakaway is due to start as I did an episode of it about 3 weeks ago.
Well in that case it would be great to have you on as a guest when that airs. It will be a lot more difficult to discuss it then as we won’t have to carefully avoid spoilers.
A lot LESS difficult, I mean. Proofreading, what is that?
All I was told was that the episode I was on will air ‘sometime in October’, no specific date or anything. My immediate family knows how I did but will still watch the show, while I’ve kept my friends (both online and offline) in the dark about it.
I also hosted a version of the game I did with my anime group on Saturday. I made the track out of some sheets of card and made up some questions for it based off popular anime series. In the end up, 3 of the team stuck together and crossed the finish line, sharing £100 between them (virtual money, of course! :D) and they all enjoyed playing it.
True to the show, did you make question 29 really hard?
I did it by series 2 rules, 25 questions instead of 30 with 4 lives. And I didn’t need to make the questions hard, they just kept getting them wrong on their own!!! 😀
We had it recorded on our club manager’s netbook and she put it up on YouTube. Here’s a link to the playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnNPTLAW8OAIyy-ZbXY4mA9uD5fIFoCdN
Skipped to part 2 to get to the meat. Heard the answer was Molossia. Skipped back to part 1 to hear the question. Shouted “THAT’S NOT ANIME” at the computer. Remembered nobody else can hear me.
This is how I spend my evenings.
The category that question was in was ‘Hetalia’, which IS an anime, so nerrr! 😀
My fiancé is borderline addicted to Hetalia, haha
I finally got off my backside and made myself a simple website for this (with the hope of getting the feed itself onto iTunes at some unspecified future point)
http://www.fifty50show.com/
Actually, on the point of an iTunes feed, iTunes requires an image that’s 1400×1400 pixels as part of their podcast submission process. The logo I have now is a measly 194×194. So a new logo (or a nice high-res version of the current one over at the twitter profile) would be much appreciated.
1400px? Eep, that’s massive. Aaanyway, let’s see what I can do.