Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway 2015

I thought NTV used terrestrial microwave links, which had negligible delay.
(At least, that was the explanation given to me for the gaffa tape marks over the BBC logo on a microwave link dish - apparently an OB van didn't make people suspicious, but if it was branded, that was a different story...)

Of course, while Skype may have low latency for the OB to studio hop, the bigger delay is on the studio to home bit - it could be up to a couple of seconds between the Skype source being cut up on the vision mixer and the viewer seeing themselves on their own screen.

Watching that piece reminded me of the 'Wait till I get you home' section of House Party. I guess it's easier and preferred by ITV to plug their own channel's programmes.

Watching it back I liked how the pair handled the live problems. In some respects I'd say they're funnier when unscripted as they're just bouncing off each other. Perhaps at times the show can feel too polished. I personally enjoy the end-of-the-show show due to the variety element.

The trouble with such shows nowadays is we over analyse them rather than just enjoy them for what they are. I don't think rotating features helps - rather than giving the impression they've too much content to do things every week it does the opposite and makes it feel like they're spreading 4 weeks of content over 7 weeks, and also that they don't really know themselves what works and what doesn't.

I was just waiting for something to go wrong with Skype on Singalong Live!

Anyone else spot during Ant v Dec after the final item dash one of the scene flats in the backstage area fell down. (One of their trolleys bumped into it.)

I don't think I've ever seen a bloke win the ads this series?

Along with two men running in hastily putting it back up again.

Wikipedia actually lists Win the Ads contestants' names for the current, and previous two, series. The previous five contestants this year have all been women. Last year it was 6/7 women, and the year before it was 5/7 (judging by names, some of which are potentially ambiguous).

If anyone cares.

I wonder if they get asked if they'd like to be a potential contestant when they enter the studio.
It's also odd how the name caption is on the person when they choose them. They could at least pretend that it was random.

As for the programme tonight, I found it very entertaining. I loved the Japanese presentation idea, but thought that the item could have been better thought out. Could they have not given them a shopping list each and sent them off individually? If they'd both managed to get the same amount of correct items it could have resorted to the timed test.

I just get the feeling around 40-50 people are in the draw, or even less, thus the name tags could already be place on the people.

When I went to see Stephen Muhern's Magic Numbers a few years ago a couple of the crew members came out to the queue with a floor plan of the audience seating and they were "randomly" selecting people to sit in the seats which had spot prizes.

It can still be - and presumably is - random, even if the random choice is made a bit earlier for all kinds of practical reasons.

It could probably be done truly live if it was absolutely necessary, but I wouldn't fancy the chances of doing it slickly.