Challenge - June 2016 onwards

20-odd Paul Hendy eps here - (This one with a certain Sascha Williams!)

Another reflection back - Hendy/Seymour worked quite well actually - with their intro schtick and Hendy's catchphrase out, but it is let down by the bad set makeover the show recieved. Other one was shiny and probably needed the 21st century makeover but this purple one just looks awful and cramped.

The likes of WOF, Blind Date, Catchphrase etc were starting to look tired compared to newer shows like Millionaire and The Weakest Link as well as reality TV shows like Big Brother so I'm not surprised ITV at the time decided to dump some of them in daytime or axe them altogether,

Was almost assuming The Price Is Right avoided being demoted to daytime, until remembering ITV revived it with Joe Pasquale some years later, after Paul O'Grady left them for Channel 4.

Just when ITV had got it's act together filling the Home and Away slot, they were in the same mess again.

Hard to imagine the 5pm slot pre The Chase!

Here's an example from 2003 which did so well 35 episodes never even saw the light of day in the end...back then they didn't try dragging out every show to an hour either!

Randomly Michael Leggo from House Party fame was involved and the end game sort of came back in fashion several years later with Nick Knowles and 'Perfection' on the BBC

Back in those days of 2003 in the years under Nigel Pickard there was a mentality on ITV that if something didn't hit the ground running (particularly in peak time) it would be yanked and replaced with something else. Daytime stuff tended to get a two or three weeks to prove themselves before being pulled. All manner of things came and went, but in the case of ITV Daytime it had been obvious ever since they lost Home & Away they didn't know what to do with the schedule (particularly when the show finished and its tooted replacement didn't turn up for nine months), so you had all kinds of random things all over the place.

Public Property, Building the Dream and 24 Hour Quiz were other flops of the time. They just couldn't compete then in the way C4 seemingly can't compete now.

Not that it was successful or long lived, but The People Versus also had daytime retooling. Perhaps uniquely it was quite a lot better than its prime time predecessor.

Amusingly, despite having only one competitor at a time the rotating desk was maintained, seemingly just so Kaye Adams could spin in to position at the start of the programme.

Seem to remember at one point, Pasquale's TPIR was shown twice a day in daytime, possibly because Nicky Campbell's quiz, For The Rest of Your Life, was yanked due to terrible ratings

I think possibly The Price is Right went to double bills then episodes became an hour long. I think Joe Pasquale’s version must have done quite well for a bit and did better than anything else they’d tried to fill the slot with.

It's interesting that Wheel of Fortune has yet to be revived, I know they're doing or have done a pilot but in comparison to other formats like Family Fortunes which came back after a couple of years break for example it's laid dormant.

It was a shame Paul Hendy just seemed to vanish from TV all of a sudden although he is obviously still very successful in more recent years with his film and panto production company (oh no he isn't!)

He often reminded me of what it would be like if Alan Partridge got a gig presenting a game show, I once nearly got the chance to meet him as I got invited to sit in the studio for the 'Rovers Return Pub Quiz' show on ITV Play but sadly couldn't make it at the last minute

'Looking for a well known watering hole...doesn't have to be a pub, doesn't have to be a club - we don't know what we're looking for, we don't know the answers!'

Yeah there were hour long episodes at 5 for a bit, with contestants row being cleared after the first showcase showdown. Always felt that was rather harsh on the ones called to "Come on Down" after the initial four.

UKGS suggests it was punted round the schedule a bit. I remember visiting my Grandmother that summer holiday and one of her complaints were how a lot of shows were moving around. Guessing it was round this time CITV started disappearing from ITV1 in the afternoon, to be initially replaced with Taggart and Midsomer Murders repeats until the quizzes established themselves. http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Weaver%27s_Week_2006-12-31.