Do Call Again...And Often...

Ok, its a personal opinion and you may I am sure have your own on the following but somehow over the past year or so a new type of programme has hit commercial television in the UK.

The suggestion was made that we have been so successful at this new form of entertainment representatives of the media companies producing and claiming copyright on these programmes have been going around the world selling it to other broadcasters and I understand that Italy have their own versions as do Australia. Not sure that its something to be proud of.

Its not so bad I suppose if they are on satellite or cable and have bought access to a transponder or use spare capacity from the main channel but unfortunately what is annoying many viewers is that these type of shows are duplicating or even broadcasting their services on some of the main channels on terrestrial television. Or some established channels are launching special channels instead of perhaps improving the channels that they already have.

Admittedly, often during the early hours where viewing figures may be low and only those who perhaps cannot sleep or work strange shifts or have come in from a late night at a pub or a night club are watching.

To call them quiz channels or quiz shows insults what I see as having been quiz shows that we have grown up with whether the light and not too demanding type of show like Family Fortunes to Mastermind.

An odd person will be lucky and that will always be so. I am sure that the television companies in between making large profits, can also show statistics to prove that lots of money has been won or given away and the old argument is there that if people are silly enough to watch and or part with their cash on the off chance they'll get through to the studio...so who are the fool's?

Well, I can think of all sorts of ways that persuade callers to phone in, too long to mention here. But considering that it can cost 50p-£1 to phone in and there is no guarantee that you'll reach the studio, no matter how often you phone, its not hard to see how the cash prizes given away soon mounts up from those who never got through or when they did a wrong answer was given.

To others like me these channels are just taking up time that once was available for some programmes(though was anything shown overnight in the UK really ever worth watching)
The truth is that advertising revenue is down(you can decide if its due to the fact there are so many channels and too much competition)or that people are unhappy with the programmes more than ever and have found more interesting things to do than watch as much television. So this is a cheap way to bring some cash into the broadcasters.

Over at ITV because of the cutbacks on local programming(costs has to be one of the main reasons)many ITV Regional news or documentaries are all starting to also include competitions where you phone in with the answer to a question that is so simple to bring in revenue because they can(with the right prize)be a good money spinner and it also helps them gauge how many viewers are watching.

I had nothing better to do so, though I did not phone in I watched an early edition on ITV Play of The Mint but how thick are some people that play these games?

You can see that ITV Play's number is 0901326888 and at the time this happened(this screen capture was later) you had to guess a 4 letter word that fitted a puzzle diagonally but had to make up the missing letter of 4 words horizontally.
MA_ E
M _SS
DA _E
BE _T

ITV Play is on Satellite on Channel 856 and at the time there was a male presenter.
Quiz Call is on Channel 855 at the time there was a female presenter asking for people to match up a list of Movies and Place Names but again the games are different, the sexes of the presenters were different and Quiz Call's phone number is again totally different to ITV Play so its not even a case of dialling carefully its 0901232323.

So at least twice some woman called Elizabeth managed to get through to ITV Play and firstly gave an answer of Phil Mitchell and the second time the name of a film.

Even though the presenter tried to explain she was phoning the wrong channel you could tell she was totally confused. And as I say it was costing 75p a time and that does not tell us how often she'd been phoning without getting through to the studio.

What can also be annoying is that even if you decide just to watch to fill time, sometimes if a game fails or time runs out they will give you the answers that have not been guessed or as with the above puzzle with the missing word, they kept it going at least an hour I'd guess and said after the last caller they would get rid of it, so you hope you'll see the answer but no they just take it off so you've spent all that time not to see the conclusion either with someone winning or the answer revealed.

Update:18th September 2006 The above letter grid was shown again last evening(I do not know if the same answer was required)or it was the same grid but you had to find an alternative word to fit the space but again it was taken off at midnight at the end of the programme without a winner or a solution for anyone who had watched the whole programme...and I mean all the programme because they ran the same game from 7pm-Midnight, that's a period of 5 hours!

There is no proof that any have broken broadcasting rules but one channel shown has been visited by the boys in blue and there is a document with the prosecution service waiting to either be dismissed or taken further.

There are also some MP's looking into whether these can really be classed as a quiz or are more like a lottery and if run as such, at some stage in the future they may find that just like the National Lottery they will have to give 20% of the profits raised to good causes. BBC Radio 4's You and Your's broadcast a feature on the investigation into one of these channels and only a week or so ago followed it up regarding the whole subject. And the broadcasting regulators are also becoming interested. Now this could affect all of these channels but perhaps by then they'll be so big paying 20% will not be a problem or perhaps the format will change.

Again, its personal and if the money is out there and you can launch a quiz channel, you'd do it but it wasn't so bad when only one or two exisited and the best is Quizmania because they do at least try to entertain between the puzzles and usually everything is given away even if they have to eventually give clues even though they too use similar tactics to persuade viewers to phone in and know how to get more to phone if the response is flagging. Also the presenters have a bit of personality and you feel you having fun. Also the camera crew are included. Some presenters have their own websites or people who have set up such sites.

It was almost been killed off but it still came back.

It was available on satellite and the prizes were modest.

Then suddenly it was a sustaining service on ITV1 when the satellite service closed for the night and the prize money shot up.

Then, it was only on ITV and nowhere else. Then it was shunted off to ITV2 which many viewers suddenly could not receive. And there have been various times where its almost disappeared or been moved around via ITV1 again and/or the new ITV Play channel that does many of these games almost 24/7. ITV even launched a new game that they ran rather than broadcasting another production companies product but through all this, either management has realised or viewers have spoken and its resulted in Quizmania now getting a regular slot of 7.30pm-1.30am weeknights on ITV's Play channel and The Mint remaining on both ITV Play and ITV1 7 night a week usually starting around 1.30am until 4.30am so at least this allows ITV to have programmes that are not of this nature for a little longer into the night. The prize money has been reduced, the highest that I have seen of late being around £6,000 for an answer. As more people get ITV Play on a variety of platforms this could increase again.

Its even more complicated than this but this is pretty close to the situation but it would become even more anoraky to go into greater detail.