I know there are people interested in doing this again, I’m just doing a final bit of research and hopefully the details will be up by the end of the month, with a view to starting in February. $10 + $1 likely to be the usual buy-in this time around.
It’s likely to be fortnightly over six months. You won’t need to play in every event to win. It’s also going to be on one of the big sites, so fingers crossed we won’t get messed around like last year.
Have you ever got up in the morning and thought to yourself “hmm, what I really want right now is the ability to watch every single title seuqnece of Treasure Hunt with Kenneth Kendall in sequential chronological order”? Did you think that very thing this morning? Well, I like to make dreams come true, so here is a video somebody else put up of precisely that very thing:
That’s right! Not only do I like gossip and pointless conjecture at Bother’s Bar, on occasion I actually do some hard research as well.
Final rounds of gameshows are difficult to perfect – you want to be fair, but at the same time you don’t really want to disenfranchise the people lagging behind – miracle comebacks are good telly after all.
I was never a fan of “let’s double the points!!!!” because it doesn’t really solve a problem – sure, you make it easier to catch up. On the other hand, you make it just as easy to pull away, and chances are if they were doing better than you before they’re going to be doing twice as good as you when it really matters.
The Krypton Factor was always slightly different in that it tests ability in a number of different disciplines. Most of these events are scored the same way (usually 10, 6, 4, 2). But the final round, General Knowledge plays slightly differently: a number of questions on the buzzer against a time limit with points on for answering correctly and points off for answering incorrectly. Incorrectly answered questions are not thrown over. The points and time limit have varied wildly over the years, but with the potential for one person to blast everybody out, is there too much weighting towards it?
So I thought we’d take a look at some stats from the 2009 series (we will do the same at the end of 2010 and compare). In this year, 2 points are awarded for a correct answer, -1 point for a wrong answer. 70 seconds is the time limit, which in practice meant between 9 and 14 questions.
The scores given are before general knowledge and in the brackets the final result:
Ep 1: 26 (31), 20 (21), 18 (17), 28 (30)
Ep 2: 22 (22), 26 (32), 20 (21), 24 (26)
Ep 3: 30 (32), 28 (30), 22 (29), 16 (20)
Ep 4: 26 (30), 12 (14), 18 (18), 34 (37)
Ep 5: 26 (26), 22 (26), 28 (30), 14 (23)
Ep 6: 30 (30), 20 (20), 20 (28), 22 (24)
Ep 7: 26 (27), 20 (23), 16 (18), 30 (36)
Ep 8: 24 (30), 10 (12), 22 (21), 36 (36)
Ep 9: 22 (31), 30 (32), 18 (19), 24 (23)
Ep 10: 14 (15), 20 (20), 22 (22), 34 (47)
Doing a little bit of number crunching shows up some quite interesting things:
To me, this leads to a surprising conclusion that far from being weighted too heavily, general knowledge wasn’t weighted enough compared to other rounds of the contest. Whilst on only one occasion did a contestant score more than the 10 points on offer from other rounds, those further down lose out more.
I will return to this at the end of the 2010 – similar scoring but a longer 90 second time limit and seemingly faster questions. It’s also the fourth round of four rather than of five or six as it used to be.
If anyone wants to compile statistics from older series as shown on Challenge, go on right ahead.
Were you one of those people who who were constantly surprised about John and Edward doing quite well in The X Factor, wondering how a mildly entertaining act was getting higher votes than, for example, Rikki? Were you one of those people who genuinely believed John and Edward were going to win, despite the fact all the comedy acts tend to get eliminated towards the end every year, and the official results suggested they were never really in the running anyway?
Christ, you must feel like a MASSIVE idiot.
More importantly, Vanilla Ice wants to release Ice Ice Baby as a collaboration with J and E, truly it will be the most important collaboration since 5ive and Queen’s We Will Rock You.
The Krypton Factor down to 3m last night apparently, that’s not much of a drop off. I predict if it stays above 2.5m it’s probably safe, what with its ABC1s and communists-who-won’t-watch-things-with-adverts-in audience. That is my professional industry opinion.
Meanwhile, what has happened to Accumulate!, hmm? We were promised new episodes after Christmas, it’s getting as bad as that 22 second gap between “the winner of The X Factor is…” and a name being read out.
Meanwhile, Endemol are now casting for 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow. You can decide for yourself as to whether this is a hilarious viral or not.
Also! Lost in TV are doing tickets for The Cube, both UK and Saudi Arabian versions! Exciting.
Well, it’s The Krypton Factor Tuesday, I thought it would be fun to dig out our feature on the early eighties American version and put it up on the Specials Board.
In retrospect, I was probably a little bit harsh on it – some of its ideas were actually used on our very early versions if my research is correct. I would kill to see early Krypton Factors again.
We stuck up clips back in the day, but you can actually watch the full episode featured on Youtube.
… to launch a US version of The X Factor for FOX in 2011. If you thought the UK version was OTT…
Our fave comment comes from Grace Dent on Twitter: “loving American tweets saying ‘Wow! Cowell is quittin Am Idol and starting X factor! So glad to see the back of this format!’
Digital Spy report that Paula Abdul might be a judge (which would be absolutely terrific as an opposing mentor), along with Cheryl Cole, and that Dermot O Leary might host. Basically nobody really knows anything for a show that isn’t going to be on for another year anyway.