Coronavirus - Impact on live/recorded shows

That's not unusual, the filming of Judge Judy works in the same way and IIRC they only do 52 filming days a year for that and it makes up an entire season's worth of episodes, which I think is something like 260 episodes a year, being a daytime show? It'll be a standard arrangement for a show like Jeopardy what with the rollover format to do it in chunks.

Its probably better for contestant availability for Countdown to do it in chunks as well as opposed to one long block, because not everybody wants to use up their entire annual leave in one go for the chance to win a Countdown teapot. The situation is worse in America as there is no legal right to annual leave in any form, any you do get is at the discretion of your employer (outside of national holidays like Independence Day, Thanksgiving and so on) and even then you're doing well if its a two digit figure.

Most long running quiz shows that air daily here and in America record in chunks, and because American shows run practically forever as it is seasons-wise, if they did a full season in one go everybody would almost certainly be half-dead by the end of it, as well as tying their availability up for other projects. The shorter series for weekly airing can be done quite quickly (Bruce Forsyth said once they were able to rack up a whole series worth of Play Your Cards Right - 13 episodes - in two weeks).

Judge Judy had a great gig to be able to get paid millions of dollars for only 52 days work a year.

Well there you go. A million dollars a day effectively before tax. Great work if you can get it. Her show's ending next year as she's out of contract with CBS and is off to Amazon c/o IMDb TV for something similar, most certainly without the pay packet (but then it is Amazon, who turn over more in a year than the entire economy of some countries, so they can probably afford her).

Countdown is like a well oiled machine, fascinating to go and see it being recorded at MediaCity (sadly I suspect a thing of the past now!)

Some interesting trivia is that the last time I went another show had nicked their usual studio so they were filming in the studio used for The Voice, just a *slightly* bigger space than required for the Countdown set (also I know this is true for most studios but when you're sat on the set it looks like something knocked up in 5 minutes from a trip to Ikea compared to how posh it looks on a TV screen!)

Poor Nick had to do a pickup or two as he started to doze off during Susie's 'Origin of words' segment and the camera must have caught it, it must be a fairly gruelling schedule at his age, this was around 8:30pm having already done 4 previous shows throughout the day, must be weird saying 'You be sure of it!...a very good afternoon' even though it's nearly bedtime!

Dudley Doolittle was a great audience warm up of course, probably best known to viewers for the familiar audience 'woop' on the TV broadcast!

Probably no surprise daytime stuff is recorded well outside of its intended slot, sometimes it gets let slip by the presenter (or you can see their watch, or some other accidental timepiece that reveals what time it was - University Challenge and Paxman's watch is quite guilty of this, and you see all kinds of times - 11, 1, 6:30, 8 are a few I've seen - but I know they can rattle through it very quickly). Alexander Armstrong spontaneously came out with "our four categories this evening are" once on (regular) Pointless. As to weird, probably no more surreal than working with Christmas trees and decorations in the middle of October on a soap, or filming a Christmas related film in the middle of June (you can sometimes tell when this has been done thanks to nature).

I seem to recall one of Keeping Up Appearances' Christmas specials being recorded earlier in the year. There was one scene in the episode where Rose ballroom dances along the street where she lived with Onslow an Daisy. Some lovely gardens featuring roses with petals on, flowers in full bloom and trees full of green leaves.

A very small section of the scene features briefly in this montage. Skip along to 2:18 on this clip.

And of course the 'classic' was the Christmas edition of Songs Of Praise from Lichfield Catherdal being recorded the day after the Easter Day service was recorded.
It made sense whilst you have all the crew, cameras, lights and sound rigged up and the cables winding their path to the scanners in the car park around the back of the building.

To hide the fact it was 8 months previous, it was recorded in the late evening, congergation told to come in winter clothing, and a token Christmas tree replacing the arrangement of newly grown spring flowers from the recording before..

It's an industry secret that all the news bulletins over Christmas week are all pre-recorded together.
In August......

And a great negotiator too. She ignores all of the attempts by CBS to discuss numbers.

Can't find another Judy? Did they try any men? If they can't find a Judy, maybe they can find a Rinder?

They don’t need to, they’ve made so many episodes that they can just repeat the old ones now. That’s why it’s ending.

There's been a lot of rival copycat shows, none have come close to Judge Judy. She's someone who does indeed bring unique value to the network. Her show has topped syndication ratings each year for the last decade.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/magazine/judge-judy-tv.html