There’s a lot of entertainment happening on Saturday so here’s a quick guide/reminder.
- There’s a new series of Keep It In The Family, flung out on Saturday nights in the Summer so you know it means business. All I know about the new series is that they’ve changed the endgame a bit, and there are fewer celebs. (ITV, 7pm)
- There’s a The Cube Celebrity Special with Rob Beckett and Rufus Hound. (ITV, 8pm)
- Fort Boyard’s on. Find hints on how to watch and join the conversation, as they say on BBC News 24, on our page here. (France 2, 7:55pm UK)
- It’s Schlag den Elton! Well it’s Schlag den Star featuring Schlag den Raab favourite Elton taking on Lukas Podolski, in the hilarious expectation that overweight quizzy funster Elton will struggle against world class international footballer Podolski over a series of mental and physical events. If we’re watching live we’ll probably watch it here, but it will almost certainly be viewable on Myspass soon afterwards. (Prosieben, 7:15pm UK)
- There’s a big ol’ 24 hour Gameshow Marathon happening in the US, as part of the Trivia Championships of North America. You can find the link to watch and donate to Extra Life here, starting at 5pm UK.
And Race to Escape airing Saturday in the US will hopefully be viewable sometime on Sunday.
NEXT SATURDAY is even more exciting as if you’ve got a Wii U and a copy of Smash Brothers you can join us for the inaugural Bother’s Bar Smash Brothers Tournament. More details on Sunday.
Just as we were “going” to “press” it’s become apparent that ITV have been uploading clips from The Krypton Factor to Youtube, and really old ones too, from series two in 1978 (thanks to people on Twitter researching that). Here’s the general knowledge round, but here’s the assault course:
That Krypton Factor GK clip is pretty special, isn’t it? I love the flippy scoreboards (technically known as Solari boards, obscurity fans, but the Eastern European name for them is even better: Pragotron!) having to go through the entire set of ten numbers to deduct two points – and imagine how it might have struggled to go from, say, 30 points to 28.
Unrelated thought: every single one of the ITV Chasers played at least one of the two series of Are You An Egghead? and it’s amusing to consider how the world might be different if some of the results had gone the other way and some of the people we know and love as Chasers had ended up on the other side. If Wikipedia is to be believed, Mark Labbett lost in the first round of the first series to one Jenny Ryan. Whatever happened to her, hmm? (Series two also saw a years-ahead-of-its-time Chaser-on-Chaser collision, with Anne Hegerty taking out Jenny Ryan in the second round…)
I do sort of love that GK clip because it’s so unlike what The Krypton Factor became, but clearly the seeds were there (I note they were linking the question with the previous answer even at this early stage) but Burns is surprisingly a bit all over the place with having to give the names, suggest if it’s an interruption, give a time check, shouting “TWO POINTS!” all the time so I’d be intrigued to know when he became so slick, presumably around the time the visually iconic lightbox/contestants in profile style came about and he could drop the explanations.
Also I kind of love they put the Squadron Leader title on the scoreboard.
I also love how much care and attention they obviously didn’t give to how the assault course looked, and that drop onto the mats at the end looks *terrifying* – not for the drops but for the landing which I think I felt each time watching it.
The Krypton Factor assault course, still stirs up one of my idle moment tv production thoughts. How many did they record in one day?
It’s conceivable that when they went to the Group A, Group B format then the 4 group heats were done in the same day – then back again for the 4 group finals, then all go back again to the do the final.
But, in today’s Health and Safety world, I seriously doubt, even with a man from HM army stationed at every obstacle, the amount of hoops and jumps the production team would have to go through, so the contestants could go through the hoops and jumps would be mega.
Two incidents that are still looming in the memory – and look away now, if you are eating –
1 contestant knocked her head going into one of the concrete tunnels, and came out (but still finished) with quite a considerable amount of blood trickling down her face. Uncle Gordon, said she was sprinted off to the medical tent for a few stiches straight afterwards.
The other one was where one contestant came down very heavily from one of the high climbs, and broke some bones in his foot, but through grit, determination, and adrenaline still managed to finish.
Still irritated that Granada didn’t appear to ask the MOD to change/alter some of the obstacles from series to series, or put a couple of new ones in just for the final, but, hey, I always wanted to do the zip wire into the muddy water at the end of the course, and sod the rest of it!
Somewhere floating around youtube is the clip from where Marian Chanter fell from the Aerial slide a good few feet into the pond at the bottom (and still won the race).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0W6mNsA2dw
I can also remember someone falling from the Burma Rope Bridge into the net below on one occasion.
Finally there was one contestant who fell from the top of the A frame and was only saved a nasty injury by getting his foot stuck in the netting.
I want to say that it was a bloke who cut his head on the tunnel…for some reason, the name “Steve Athens” has popped into my mind…either I’m deluded, or I have a Rainman-like attention to detail…!!
While we’re in Game Show Hypothetical land…
We know that the first series of Perfection was delayed in autumn 2010 after a production error, and that Pointless stepped into the vacant slot only a few weeks after the last series ended.
What if Perfection had been completed properly? Would Pointless have grown into cult television as quickly as it did?
In particular, would Pointless have taken over the 5.15 slot in summer 2011? Would the BBC have rotated it with other shows?
Meanwhile here’s a full ep (albeit a special) from 1983 I don’t think I’ve seen yet and may well be the earliest full ep currently on Youtube:
I never did understand why they downgraded the quiz questions to 1 point per answer in the 80s, when it was clearly too difficult to overhaul even a modest lead. Also incredible that the 70s version had 3’30” of questions which was whittled down to 100 seconds, then 90, then 75.
I wonder if there were a lot of complaints about the GK round being too overpowered in the 70s? Much like Missing Vowels, I did work out (certainly with the Shephard one) that it’s much less powered than you thought, underpowered compared to the rest of the show in fact.
I noticed actually that they’ve very much filmed the GK round in a very similar manner to University Challenge, which Granada would have made as well.
Almost certainly the reason for the change, but then it’s up to the producers to have the guts to politely ignore that in the interests of a good show.
It’s not like the maths weren’t far out. At 2 point a question, a ‘fair’ round would have a minimum of (10+6+4+2)/2 = 11 questions. Add a few for dropped questions, then about 14 is ok – which, given the relatively sedentary pace of Burns delivery, is probably about right for 90-100 seconds. At 1 point a question, you’d need twice as long.
I could understand the complaints for 2 points at 3’30”.
In the GK 1978 clips they asked over twenty questions each, so one point per correct answer might have been more suitable then. I’m thinking if they revive KF they should have a two-minute GK round, as fast paced as possible, with one point per correct answer. I think that would be 24 questions or so, enough to allow for a comeback without undermining the rest of the game.
That’s a bastard hard mental agility round, by the way.
Apropos of nothing, here’s an article about working in TX Playout by a chum named John. It’s not gameshow related, but it’s a brilliant read if you’re interested in television:
http://www.dirtyfeed.org/2015/08/24-hours-in-channel-5-tx/
And it gives you heart palpitations just reading about it! Great article.
Observation Round, good luck playing along at home:
1,017,000 (9.5%) for Freeze Out yesterday. 47% down on the quarterly slot average, off a lead in of 0.4m from Hello Campers. Interestingly the only other show with such a massive decline on the slot average was Lip Sync Battle with 324,000 (2.4%) – a 46.9% decline on the average. Given the lower quality of bookings we can likely expect in the British version I would suggest this does not bode well for Channel 5.
920,000 (4.9%) for Celebrity Fifteen to One.
24 Hr GSMW currently streaming on Periscope as there are current streaming issues:
https://www.periscope.tv/w/aJYtuTQ5NDUyODB8NTY3MzkxNzehSZgKxOQi8KO1pHlPXETiucXoePidQdqvre7aF8KXkw==
Sounds like they’ve got the proper Twitch stream up and should be running in a bit:
http://www-origin.twitch.tv/homegameenterprizes
2.77m (18.6%) for Keep it in The Family, 2.35m (14.6%) for The Cube and 3.01m (18.3%) for Five Star Family Reunion.
Excludes +1 for the ITV quizzes, so KIITF might have hit 3m and The Cube was probably 2.5-2.6. Looks alright-ish for KIITF (more so the share), but you can’t help but feel that The Cube isn’t long for this world.
The Cube’s mainly got by by doing quite well with the young male demographic, from a pure numbers perspective it probably should have got the chop a little while ago.
We will never know why it was getting 6m leading into The X Factor one year and couldn’t repeat it the next.
I saw a presentation on ITV ratings recently. The Cube doesn’t just skew younger than any other entertainment show (on both major channels), it skews way, way younger. Seriously, on the graph I saw the Y axis was age of viewers and The Cube was practically off the bottom of the page. It’s also marginally more upmarket than many other ITV formats (about on a par with The Chase in that regard). That obviously helps. As unscripted TV rates lower and lower each year things like this will become increasingly important.
I had a 2.9 for KIITF (including +1), so not quite tipping 3m.