Bullseye on Challenge

I just caught the end of an episode of Bullseye on Challenge (a Jim Bowen episode but one of the later ones) and over the credits, they cut something out. I am not sure if it was an edit made by Central or Challenge. The edit looked too good for Challenge but not good enough for a mid-nineties ITV show.

I wonder if anyone knows what was cut out and/or which company did it? I was going to post this message on the Challenge forum and it would have been a long shot to get an answer even there, but it turns out the Challenge forum 'closes' at midnight so I thought I would try my luck here anyway.

If anyone is still up and has nothing better to do, you can catch the episode I am talking about at 01:00 on Challenge+1 (with the end credits obviously being around 01:24).

If you remember, Bullseye ended with the credits on the left and a dartboard containing the picture on the right (the original credit squeeze?) so to remove anything said over the credits with a straight edit would have caused the credits to jump. To get around this, it seems someone has slowed down the bit where Tony Green waves so that they can remove something else and still keep the credits to time. What could Jim Bowen have possibly said that needed to be removed in 199* or was fine in 199* and needed to be removed in 2010? BTW, we still heard Jim Bowen say "See you next week" despite the next episode being on in 5 minutes so it wasn't that, that was removed.

Update: While I have been writing this post, I have been watching the second episode of Bullseye. This is edited very badly too and looks terrible. I assume these are Challenge edits for time and it didn't go out looking like this on ITV.

Anyway, the first edit I spoke of didn't seem to be an edit for time because they had to slow down Tony Green's wave to fill the time left by the edit so I am still interested to find out what was cut out. Failing that, ill thought out theories and speculation are also welcome.

Thanks.

Challenge make a lot of edits, some are for time and occasionally they cut references to events or broadcast times out. I'm not sure but I remember reading on the Challenge forum a few years ago they sometimes cut out a bit where Jim says 'stick with us the only place to be on ITV on a saturday night' or something similar. Though those edits could have been made by ITV when they sold the series on - unlikely.

That's a bit of a funny one as challenge are usually more sympathatic towards the edits, when they and Ftn reran the Krypton Factor a few years ago they kept in the mention that 'we will be back next Monday at 7.00 on ITV'.

Challenge have a problems these days, there need to fit into a 24mins time slot, so there can fit in with 3 mins of adverts. BBC shows are even worse unlike the 1-2 mins of out of ITV, BBC need anything up to 6mins axed!

Maybe they cut out a call for contestants for the next series? Back in those days they used to advertise for contestants within the programme (either before the credits or during).

The slowing down bit sounds far too good for it to have been a Challenge job, knowing how attrocious the edits Dave (which is run by the same people) make to Top Gear are!

They used to be really random editing The Crystal Maze - some episodes had the original ending of Richard O'Brien/Ed Tudor Pole telling us the show's back on next week, whereas some cut that out (as it's on Challenge every day). So you'd get the host saying "Well, that's it..." and then a sudden fade to the end credits, which was rather amusing at times.

Episodes of Roy Walker Catchphrase cut out the viewer's competition, although they forgot to edit one episode leading to the surreal situation of Roy asking viewers to call a 0891 number ten years after the lines closed.

I notice there are edits on one of the later Les Dennis Family Fortunes. They edit out the competition by blurring out the Central/Carlton address in Nottingham and replacing Peter Dickson's voice with a theme tune being on loop.

Back when Challenge were good at editing things, they'd simply have a message appear over these screens saying "Lines now closed" or something similar...

Interesting (well for me anyway) that Challenge are showing Room 101 in a 35 minute slot so all the other programmes start at x:35 or x:05 until 04:00am when The People Versus gets a 25 minute slot to put them back to the x:00/x:30 schedule they seem obsessed with. I wonder if this is due to Room 101 being on one of the UKTV channels before Challenge started showing it. Maybe UKTV have/had a different policy than Challenge.

It's a shame as Challenge do show some good and/or interesting programmes but so many of them are ruined by technically and editorially terrible editing.

It's harder to chop things from Room 101 because each segment is fairly long. They have edited them slightly though. They've been shown on Challenge for a while, and Virgin 1 before that.

It is easy to chop things from Room 101. It maybe hard to do it well, but I don't think that is a priority for Challenge. If they wanted to show it in a 30 minute slot they could just butcher it like they do some of the other programmes.