Challenge - June 2016 onwards

Even if it looks cheap to run, they have to pay someone or multiple people, for the rights. I feel like Sky (or if ownership changes, the new owner) could just spend more money and buy the IP for the majority of older game shows they have broadcast, either in the past or the present, instead of paying money at someone else for broadcast rights. Bringing it in-house would mean they could easily do as you describe and leave it running 24/7 without any need to expend money on rights to broadcasting things since they would own it outright.

There's no chance anyone would be willing to give up the IP of their formats especially the likes of Fremantle which owns a huge catalogue of gameshow formats.

I mean you're probably right that people won't do it, but perhaps companies should just have one defined broadcaster per country that has "unlimited" rights broadcasts of certain game shows so they don't end up lapsing and going off air. And what about all these really old game shows? Does Fremantle own like the whole catalogue of game shows from 1980-2005 (or thereabouts)? 'Cause if they do, that seems rather monopolistic (even though nothing will change in that regard lol)

Fremantle own anything made by Reg Grundy. Which is a lot, but not a monopoly.

Anything made by Thames too. In fact they own quite a fair bit in terms of game shows, loads of ITV's 90s game shows for a start. A shame Fremantle don't own any channels in the UK since they sold Channel 5 considering their large back catalogue they could fill the channels with. Not that they ever showed it even then. Probably making more money selling it off to others considering the amount of channels who show at least some of their archive.

Fremantle's gameshow library is huge and pretty much unrivalled in terms of heritage formats owing to the numerous companies they bought and inherited over the decades. Reg Grundy as mentioned but also Mark Goodson Productions which created Price is Right, Family Feud, Play Your Cards Right amongst many others. Grundy would make a lot of the local versions of those formats in Europe and Oz though this long preceded the two companies' assets being part of the same company.

Of course they don't own the UK version of Family Fortunes (the ATV/Central/Carlton one anyway, they down own the Vernon Kay one). They do own Supermarket Sweep, Play Your Cards Right (I think ITV still own the 80s version though?), The Price is Right (again, I think ITV still own the 80s version of that) and Strike It Rich though, even though they were nominally credited to another ITV company. Always strange to see the Central, LWT and Yorkshire endcaps followed by a Fremantle one on those shows.

Interesting how there was the thing with Strike It Lucky moving from Thames to LWT and having to change the name because Thames owned the rights to it, then both versions ended up in common ownership a few years down the line anyway.

I do wish Challenge would show Strike It Rich rather than Strike It Lucky in daytime, with working from home I usually have Challenge on 11am - 3pm at the moment, Strike It Lucky just looks so 'beige' compared to Strike It Rich which is a lot more colourful

Same with Family Fortunes, a bit boring not being in the era where the top answers can win a holiday or car (99.99999% they choose the car of course!)

Catchphrase with Roy Walker still amuses me though when he whips out £3000 from his pockets, surprised he never got mugged outside the studios

I make a swift U-turn at 3pm when The Chase comes on...

I prefer Strike It Lucky myself.

I agree on both of those points. I enjoy older episodes of Family Fortunes with Monkhouse or Bygraves because of the novelty it of it, but I’d much rather see the later episodes from Les Dennis era.

Strike it Rich does simply look much look better than Strike it Lucky. I think I’m more used to it being known as Strike it Rich by now too.

Of course Strike It Rich was effectively the same show in new packaging, but the newer set (and the series 6 set colour design in the original show) was probably closer to the original 1986 American series:


Just a bit less tacky looking, without all the gummings, the showmanship and the flashy lights (and of course the product placement). We were always going to have to make changes anyway but I think what we ended up with worked well.

Of course it outlasted the US format by some considerable margin, aided of course by the fact nobody took the charade seriously, including Barrymore.

By the way, if anybody was wondering what that Strike It Lucky board game looked like and how it worked in operation:

(more on Barrymore's Instagram account)

The theme tune for Strike It Rich had similarities to Strike It Lucky. The Rich theme could have been interpreted as a remixed version but I expect LWT made enough changes so that it was unique enough.