Challenge - June 2016 onwards

Im sure one has, and it was against the lawyer. Im sure someone can confirm, it was a shock.

Didn't the cap actually remain at £6,000 during the $64,000 Question's run, with the show only allowed to offer the £6,400 top prize every other episode?

Celebrity Squares was, I believe, the first new or returning ITV game show after the cap was abolished. However, Central and Grundy understandably treaded carefully, as the show's cars weren't worth more than £20,000, and most of them were British.

Indeed, just about every show before 1998 didn't go too far beyond the old limit (with the notable exception of Raise the Roof). And even in June '98, WoF's £20k cash prize was being promoted as the UK's biggest game show prize - despite Millionaire being just around the corner, and the National Lottery Big Ticket offering £100,000 amidst its awfulness:

Spin the Wheel Of Fortune on ITV in 1998: pic.twitter.com/K2fewmbhuf

— Adam Beckwith (@AdamNostalgia) October 22, 2016

After the cap was abolished, holiday prizes started to become more elaborate too - Catchphrase touted its round-the-world-trip star prize as "television's biggest travel prize".

The Chase consolation £4k prize has been won a handful of times, much like the single contestant finals have been won a few times. The Chase is probably more down to the luck of the draw on the question front, and as Chris Tarrant said multiple times on Millionaire, they're only easy if you know them.



On screen they go home with nothing, but there were a handful of shows where you did get a consolidation prize even though it wasn't announced on air. UKGameshows did mention this on the entries but for whatever reason I can't find them at the moment.

It's probably safe to assume a lot of children's shows had unmentioned consolidation prizes for non-winners. That being said it was almost impossible to lose on some children's TV shows prize-wise - a not half-bad prize for winning and a semi-decent prize for not winning (Finders Keepers is a classic example of this).

Doesn't Tipping Point have spot prizes too which presumably get awarded to the contestant regardless of whether they win or even make the final.

P.S. Challenge cheekily scheduling The Chase at 5pm from tomorrow.

At one time even runners up would win something, their points translated into couple of hundred quid plus the spot prize of a VCR they'd won earlier on.

In the late 90s you could in theory take home 20-25,000 in prizes on Bruce's Price is Right.

There definitely seems to have been another distinct change in how prizes work on UK game shows. The US-style mega-money era has well and truly shot its bolt - if the decline of Millionaire and later DoND didn't do it, the spectacular flameout that was Red or Black surely did.

Then again, we're also in an era where game shows are thriving in daytime, but ITV primetime game shows are either celebrity versions of their top two daytime shows (The Chase, Tipping Point) or they're demonstrably affordable weekend rotational options (Catchphrase 2.0, Ninja Warrior UK, 5 Gold Rings). And the post-DoND approach to daytime seems to be to dangle the possibility of a big win whilst setting it up so that your actual per-episode budget is piffling. In fact, I remember commenting during peak-era DoND (when ITV were rumoured to be buying the format) that they should pick up Spanish format Pasapalabra because that had an almost-unwinnable endgame that, when eventually won, could produce absurdly large jackpots:



And if Pasapalabra looks familiar now? Well, that's because ITV did pick up that format (as Alphabetical) a decade later, by which time dangling a huge prize whilst usually giving away £0 was now long established as their daytime game show modus operandi .

Another problem with gameshows these days is if somethings new, it nosedives. ITV have tried to give us something different and exciting many other times but everyone seems to want the same old thing. Your format can't be too complicating, but it cant be too easy. Mind you, two of my favourite gameshows of all time are on nearly everyday on Challenge, Ninja Warrior (Not the UK version, because that was useless) and Takeshi's Castle.

I've never quite understood why when The Chase and Pointless are on mainstream TV pretty much every day, you'd also want to watch repeats of them on Challenge as well, same as when they went overboard with WWTBAM repeats whilst it was still airing on ITV.

Presumably the 'syndication' rights for these shows brokered on a 100-200 episode basis, are dirt cheap and - given they are made in bulk and costs get lower the more you make - flogging them off to Challenge series after series, will eventually claw back most of the budget.

I'm sure I read somewhere that the money that the various owners of Challege paid to repeat Crystal Maze series ad nauseam, have actually paid back the budget Channel 4 originally spent on the show.

Ironically the $64,000 Question was another of the quiz shows named in the US scandals.

The above info about the UK version of 21 has always puzzles me. The producers had been understandably secretive about the rigging (to the point where it was established that Jack Barry, co-owner of the American production company and host of 21, had been kept in the dark himself), and so I can't see how Granada would have been aware, much less get involved in a practice that could very easily (and, frankly, should) have lost them their ITV licence. It doesn't ring true.

This was another carry-over from the US shows. Always eager to maximise advertising revenue, the American producers would give away 'parting gifts' which would be funded by plugging the products at the end of the show (TVs, a $500 gift voucher from a catalogue company, a year's supply of Turtle Wax etc etc)... the UK companies couldn't do that but the general practice was kept.