Ten to the Top

By | March 6, 2023
8 Comments

This week’s BIG NEWS is the new 10:30 music quiz replacing Popmaster on Radio 2 with Ken Bruce off to Greatest Hits Radio, Gary Davies trialling it today.

From the press release:

On Monday 6 March at 10.30am, Gary Davies launches Radio 2’s brand new weekday pop quiz – Ten to the Top, an accumulator quiz where it pays to answer the questions correctly in order. Ten to the Top will test our listeners’ music knowledge as they battle for pop supremacy.

  • Each player will be asked 10 questions about pop music.
  • Question 1 is worth 1 point if answered correctly, question 2 is worth 2 points, question 3 is worth 3 points, all the way up to 10.
  • However, if a question is answered incorrectly the value of the following question goes back to 1 point again, then the next question is 2 points if answered correctly, and so on.
  • Each contestant has a Joker to play, and for that question they’ll get double points if it’s answered correctly.
  • The player with the most points wins a smart speaker, and if it’s a draw there will be a tie-breaker question.

I haven’t heard it yet and can’t listen until this evening, but here are my main thoughts going by that:

  • I get why they’ve done it – feels a bit like Champions League Popmaster, adds a bit of jeopardy, but that feels like a lot of numbers to have to keep track of – question number, value of question, total score. On TV there are visual means to do so, on radio that’s going to sound quite complex.
  • The joker gives a distinct disadvantage to playing first if the second caller can hear how the first player got on. You don’t have to make a decision, the first player has effectively set a target for when you need to play it.
  • If you’re playing along at home and want to compare scores with others, are you meant to use the points the radio contestant is playing for or are you meant to keep your own accurate reading as if you were playing for real? How many are going to do that?

I suspect nobody is going to like it today, but it’s got a month to bed in before Ken starts up again and perhaps people will warm to it. What did you think?

Show Discussion: Cheat

By | February 28, 2023
9 Comments

Netflix,
From 1st March

We’re getting to test out a lot of my hypotheses this year, firstly that Jeopardy‘s not going to work from cold in 2023 on ITV, secondly that quiz shows hold an extremely low value on streaming services where people can choose what they want (as opposed to on broadcast TV where they can fill a slot inexpensively and occasionally make a load of money).

Ch£at is that quiz show testing that second hypothesis this time after Netflix tried Bullshit last year (second series not currently forthcoming), we went and saw an episode being filmed last May and it was, basically, fine. People give answers to questions, if they don’t know an answer they can push a button and read it off a screen, the other contestants have to work out if they cheated or not. Be the best at it and win up to £50,000. Ellie Taylor is the richardosman, Danny Dyer mugs to camera whilst calling people mugs. We will at least get to see how it all edits down and how big they’ve gone on Dyer.

Intrigued to see what you think! Let us know in the comments.

Jeopardy’s actually happening then

By | February 27, 2023
9 Comments

Via TV Zone:

Twenty episodes in the Autumn.

There are still three things, the three circles to square, over doing this in daytime:

  • You’ve got to get an hour out of it.
  • You’ve got to have the budget to make the prize worthwhile.
  • You’ve got to make “what is…” not sound extremely stupid.

I can’t back this, but I wish everyone involved best of luck.

Show Discussion: The Challenge UK

By | February 19, 2023
14 Comments

Weeknights 20th-24th Feb, 11pm,
Channel 5

Well here’s some fun, the UK’s first domestic season of The Challenge, MTV’s demanding physical challenge with a bit of strategy and usually a bit of fighting and shagging show, comes to Channel 5 and they’re so happy and confident in it they’re putting it out over a week at 11pm and in a way that makes it look a little bit like this was meant to be ten-episodes and they’re having to butcher it to five just to get it out of the way. But we won’t know the truth of this until the first episode goes out. In theory the winners win a share of £100,000 and go through to a The Challenge World Championship on Paramount Plus next month, in reality this too seems to be a watered down version of the original stated idea which now seems to feature the local winners and anyone else the producers seem to just fancy adding into the mix.

The Challenge is a difficult show to love but we’d be lying if we said we haven’t enjoyed it in the past – it’s empty calories, but some of the challenges look quite neat, they seem genuinely demanding and there’s usually some sort of soap-y drama happening to carry it along. I’ve described the original before as Survivor Legacy, many of the seasons have a common and rotating bunch of characters who have all developed beef with each other. The Challenge UK is obviously not going to have that, short of what these people may or may not have said about each other outside of the reality shows they’ve done already.

Interestingly there have been a number of UK competitors in the original Challenge as its expanded over the last five years or so and even an entire US vs UK series with stars of Geordie Shore, Ex On The Beach, Love Island and the like (War of the Worlds 2, season 34 if you want to look it up, they’re usually on a streaming service somewhere but there’s no rhyme or reason as to which seasons are on which services) so it’s not an unknown quantity, and some UK competitors have been cast regulars for a few years now. We will see how this new batch competes, and if Mark Wright is any good as host, in due course.

Watched it? Let us know what you think in the comments.

The increasing pace of the death of television light entertainment

By | February 15, 2023
5 Comments
  • Ninja Warrior UK – DEAD
  • Catchpoint – DEAD
  • I Can See Your Voice – You can’t anymore, DEAD
  • The Masked Dancer – DEAD (sorry, “resting for the Rugby World Cup”)
  • Youngest Media, creator of the award-winning Moneybags (DEAD) – DEAD

The great news is though is that we’ve still got another series of Moneyball to look forward to. Television is SAVED!

Edit:

  • Epic Gameshow – DEAD

Edit edit:

Happy Valentine’s Day

By | February 14, 2023
2 Comments

We were wondering what we were going to put for this today, then yesterday out of the blue Youtube archivist Neil Miles put up a video with the opening few minutes of Sky One’s legendary Wife of the Week, a show where Christopher Biggins tasks homemakers to compete to see who is best at, er, wifely duties, in order to win a rolling pin. A show which it’s fair to say probably hasn’t aged well. It starts 10:20 in, if the video doesn’t jump there automatically.