Challenge - June 2016 onwards

I went to the dream factory to see a couple of episodes being filmed, shortly after the Box 23 twist, by then I think they had axed the ‘random’ contestant picker bit too!

I also seem to remember they had the ‘stats board’ at that point which spoiled the fact there had been another quarter millionaire for people attending the recording as it had yet to air!

Mark Olver did the warm up, last time I saw him was at a £100K Drop recording. There was of course the episode where he surprised Noel with the fake ‘power 5 all gone in first round’ setup!

I also went to Deal On Tour in Blackpool but that was a bit pointless as they filmed it at the top of the tower and the pilgrims had to watch it all from a TV in the ballroom anyway! I still have my stick of rock from the contestant finding 1p in the first round!

Nothing fake about it, what your saw on screen would have been exactly how it played out in the studio such was the way DOND was recorded.

Yes, but as a viewer, we didn't need to see it. Including all the commotion is unnecessary, especially in a programme that was already severely padded out for all it was.

Well I think most people enjoy things going wrong and will have found it refreshing seeing that process, the game isn’t getting additional padding out for this being included in the edit the slot would have been the same length as it would have always been.

Challenge have scheduled continuous blocks of game shows next week rather than its usual regular schedule. Is this Challenge listening to it's viewers by not putting The Chase on all the time? Or just an Easter special? I thought they were going to introduce new Gameshows rather than just tinker with the daily running order.

Well, indeed, light entertainment is inherently pointless so it doesn't matter what happens on the show as long as it's entertaining. It's like the argument that the Strictly results are "padded out" - they could do it in five minutes if they wanted, but they don't, because it's a piece of entertainment, not a bit of admin to be got over with as quickly as possible. I don't believe the audience sits there looking at their watches going "Come on, come on, get on with it".

There was another interesting bit quite early on in Deal or No Deal when a box fell off the table and came open, so they had to stop the game and shuffle them all around. Like that, this was left in the finished programme, despite the fact they made no reference to it after the incident so it could easily have been edited out, but it wasn't, because it was a bit of a novelty. That kind of thing helped to cement it as a more unusual type of game show, not slick like all the other ones.

Noel was always a big one for that kind of thing, too, on Telly Addicts he would always get excited when the teams would break any kind of record or something would happen for the first time "in the modern history of Telly Addicts", as he used to say. He loved that kind of thing.

I always love it when a game show can spin off into strange directions. I always used to love it on Fifteen to One when the game ran short and William G Stewart would take a bit of time to discuss some aspect of the game's mechanics or the show's production. That of course span off into the Fifteen to One Scrapbook they once did which was a whole show devoted to answering viewers' letters about things that had come up in the show. I love that kind of thing. I love how Pointless has been going so long it's generated so many running jokes and statistics that they've been able to spin off several books from it.

I see Challenge have pretty much run out of things to say on Facebook when they have to resort to writing posts about National Pet Day using a Bullseye screenshot of what I can only presume is a large toy cat on wheels:

Wasn't that where the Elgin Marbles thing originated?

The latest announcement from Challenge is that there are more new (repeats) of The Chase on tonight from 9pm...

That’s been mentioned here before. I think it’s remote controlled? It prompted a rather hilarious theory that the prizes were selected randomly from an Argos/Index catalogue sitting in a production office somewhere.

Not to random a theory. The Argos 16 Day guarantee means they could take the ones that weren't won back for a refund!

I think Jim Bowen said that they would sometimes change the the special prize shown if they lost and show a generic holiday video to save the car (or whatever) reveal for the next episode

They definitely did it with the speedboats. Story goes that they had a deal with a local dealership that got them at a cut-down price for a period. If the contestants lost they'd bring out the car or run the holiday VT, if they won, out came the speedboat!