Amazingly despite nobody watching it (except on Bank Holidays where it managed a mighty 600,000 or so) and it hilariously not doing as well as Deal or No Deal which barely gets half a mill these days 15 to 1 seems to be coming back for a second run. If you want to have a go, and you might as well as nobody’s watching so it won’t be humiliating if you lose, you can e-mail 15to1apps@remedyproductions.tv for an application.
If I was the producer of 5 Minutes to a Fortune I’d probably be pretty bloody livid to be honest. Perhaps the next series will just be going out on Bank Holidays.
IN OTHER NEWS Mark Benton’s hosting quiz meets bowling quiz show The Edge and they’re filming a pilot on Sunday. I was going to play cards in London on Sunday but instead I might try and go to this. No promises though.
SPEAKING OF CARDS it’s the Bother’s Bar Open tomorrow night, 8:30 start, all the details are here.
Aaaand the The Edge pilot is now not happening on Sunday. With an audience, at any rate.
What’s the news on The Edge pilot? Let me know what you know and I’ll try to find out more too…….
All I know is what the BBC Ticketing Unit have told me – apparently there’s been a “change of date” and that they can’t continue with my application. They’re not advertising it anywhere else.
I’m hoping to go and see a record at the end of the month so not the end of the world, but pilots make great stories.
This article says The Edge has already been picked up for 25 eps..
http://www.digitalspy.com/british-tv/news/a581657/mark-benton-is-living-on-the-edge-in-new-bbc-daytime-game-show.html#~oIZmunGPVnG52W
Yes I can believe it, they’ve been advertising the audience tickets for the proper shows for a while. Maybe this is a meant a proper set runthrough before they start filming at the end of the month.
They also announced it on the BBC Press office website, so I’m guessing it’s on- The description sounds like it could be fun, if they don’t take it too seriously (it’s one of those shows that probably would be a hit in Italy)..
There is no way this would exist without Tipping Point, whether it can match TP’s gutwrenching and visceral will it/won’t it physicality remains to be seen.
I’m still trying to work out whether this is using lawn bowling balls – with bias and all – or smaller versions of ten-pin bowling balls.
The Edge sounds interesting. From what I can gather answering questions correctly increases the target area you have to roll your ball into, but the titular “Edge” sits just beyond, and if you go over you lose.
You’re absolutely right that it wouldn’t exist without Tipping Point, nor would Decimate, or Ejector Seat. At least The Edge has managed to identify (in my opinion) the main reason for TP’s success – lots of questions plus a series of moments of jeopardy. And they’ve come up with a physical device which is integral to a format rather than a gimmick. So good luck to them.
As for 15 to 1, I don’t imagine it’s that cheap to make. If they shoot three or four a day it’ll probably work out about the same price as Come Dine With Me / Coach Trip (about £40-50k per hour), and repeats of CDWM would certainly rate better. My educated guess is that its return can be attributed to one or both of the following:
– The channel and production company agreeing before series one that a second series would cost less. Basically the producers say “We need £50k per episode for series one, but if it comes back we can amortise the cost of the set and key production people and do series two for £40k (I’m just pulling these numbers from nowhere, by the way).
– Risk averse commissioners with no better options. Nothing else they’ve tried has done much better, and commissioners don’t need to stick their necks out to bring back old formats like they do to commission new ones. New stuff typically needs at least one commissioner to champion it creatively to the channel head, commissioning old stuff is treated like a pure business decision.
I think option two is ridiculous, the very definition of repeatedly banging your head against a wall. I refuse to believe there is *nothing* out there worth trying.
It’s not about what’s out there, though, it’s about commissioners trying to cover their own backs.
If you commission Rising Star and it flops you can say “Don’t blame me – it was a “mega hit” in Israel, and every other country in the world thought it was good enough to commission as well.”
If you bring back Celebrity Squares and it flops you can say “Don’t blame me – it was a “mega hit” twenty years ago, and all those other revamps rated well.”
And yes, I know that those statements aren’t, strictly speaking, true, but they’re the sort of thing that become received wisdom in telly extraordinarily quickly. Remember that critical thinking is not something that’s valued or encouraged in the industry.
Occasionally you’ll find a commissioner who understands the flip side of the coin – that a risk which pays off is infinitely more valuable to their career than a succession of safe decisions, but they’re the exception rather than the rule (Karl Warner, when he was still commissioning, springs to mind).
And to be fair to the networks, revamps have been working better then new ideas. Do you think if ITV had put “Holly Willoughby’s Great British Surprises” on Sunday nights it would have got four million viewers? Would “Keith Lemon’s Celebrity Home Invasion” have topped four million, or would it have been below two million like LemonAid? Even the most talented, best loved presenters on TV couldn’t find a new vehicle that worked for them, and ended up doing Takeaway again. The industry has yet to work out how to “do” entertainment in this new multi-channel age, in which the old ways aren’t really working.
I’ll second pretty much everything you’ve just said Paul. There are very few decent commissioners out there (I agree, that Karl Warner was definitely one of the best). I’ve never understood why ‘critical thinking’ and logic are not appreciated or used more often in television, considering both are very rarely applied.
It’s a shame that entertainment commissioners are bringing back so many old formats in primetime, and not taking risks with new shows. They really do lack bottle (especially ITV at present). I might start pitching to broadcasters abroad who are willing to take risks as, quite frankly, I’d have a better chance with them than I do with British broadcasters.
It’s sad that revivals and imported formats are taking precedent in primetime over fresh home-grown content. No risk, no reward!
Does this mean I can stop fearing for the fate of Countdown now?
For now at least.
I honestly think they’ll try and fix the problems of the first series of Fifteen to One, I’d be surprised if the episodes run longer than 45 minutes and I hope it isn’t put up against Tipping Point or Chaseless. If they try and sell it as a pure no frills quiz they might just do better than last time. 5 Minutes to a Fortune was never given a chance though and that’s the real scandal here of course. I guess the celebrity version has been the difference between this getting recommissioned and not though.
Shame they didn’t try any celebrity editions of 5 Minutes to a… OH HANG ON.
Of course the difference here is the celebrity version is basically a different show based on the same format. Different host, different tone, different set, different rules. It’s got a degree of farce to it, I suspect it’s that version that’s been the difference between the daytime version coming back and not coming back perhaps they didn’t feel they could just bring the celebrity one back without giving the daily version at least a second attempt.
Perhaps this is the wrong time to mention this, but Release The Hounds is apparently coming to the US on Fox.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/celebrity/scots-actor-jimmy-vee-hits-3786174
Did you not see that?
Maybe it was economics that helped bring the show back- it’s probably really cheap to produce, and anything else they could put there may not do as well considering the timeslot competition…
I’ve been watching repeats of the original Fifteen-to-One on Challenge and it holds up surprisingly well, and I didn’t watch the show the first time around so it’s not nostalgia talking.
The problem with the remake is that by dragging it out to an hour and adding a bunch of filler they’ve missed the whole point of the show. It’s supposed to be a relentless rapid-fire quiz. The sheer speed of the questions is the hook that draws you in.
Cut the show to 30-40 minutes and up the pace (William G. Stewart was *fast*) and I can see it catching on.
If they really need to pad it out, add a Jeopardy-esque Q&A before the final round and extend the final round from 40 to 50 questions.