Challenge - June 2016 onwards

Is it with that horrible beige set or the original one?

Original. If you remember they changed it then changed it back the following year.

It's looking like Challenge have started a permanent wide-screen broadcast, pillarboxing 4:3 shows (but not the DOG) in the process. Spotted this yesterday, still happening today so seems deliberate choice.

I spotted it today on Family Fortunes, but I admit I thought it was just how they'd recieved the masters (or how they loaded them onto the server) as I know that's happened with some episodes of shows before. It's the first time I've seen the 1990 series on there for a good decade or so, so I presume they've recently re-acquired it (using copies with the old CTE logo on the end though!).

In a way it's good- as it means the DOG is entirely out of the picture!

I think they last showed them around the time Sky took over, 2011/12. Certainly towards the end of the VMTV era, when they didn't acquire anything pretty much, it appeared a fair bit.

I do seem to remember in the late VMTV era (and the early Sky era, as they were still using the same tapes), FF was BADLY edited (although most shows on there were). To the point where they cut off most of the opening titles, and the chats with the contestants. I remember seeing horribly edited Wheel Of Fortunes in that era too (though all they were showing then was the 2000 John Leslie daytime series on a loop).

Yes, and yet often the completely redundant (although interesting!) 'Cte' or (less interesting) 'Carlton International' cap was left.

And Wheel of Fortune left the CBS/Paramount logo on the end. Thankfully after the Scottish endcap- unlike most CBS/Paramount stuff since the 2006 split where they cut off the old Paramount and Viacom logos annoyingly.

The Paul Daniels episodes of Wipeout were butchered fairly horribly too, almost all contestant/host chat cut out making the show run at basically warp speed for the first half or so.

Anyone else remember the Family Fortunes marathon Challenge showed on New Years Day 2002? An episode or two each from almost every series of the show's history, starting with the 1982 series (Central's first, Bob's last) and going right up to almost present day at the time, around 1998-9 I think. Fascinating to watch fifteen years unfold within a few hours, especially in the pre-Youtube era. Episodes were selected well too, the famous 'Turkey' episode from the Bygraves era included.

Presumably the earliest ATV series couldn't be located easily at the time, Wikipedia lists an extremely small survival rate for them. Recall seeing a few Bob episodes on the channel about four years ago though.

They showed all 26 episodes of Bob's final series- depsite what lostshows.com says about some episodes of it being missing (and none of them looked like they'd come from off air recordings). Challenge have also shown most of the episodes of Bullseye that site claims are "missing" too.

I think there are indeed only a handful of surviving episodes from the first 3 series of Family Fortunes (plus a few more that were uncovered in Bob's collection- which hadn't been explored in 2002). The very first episode is one of the survivors, thankfully- it's on YouTube complete with VT clock.

"explored in 2002" might be better as "didn't know it existed in 2002" considering Bob covered the his archive up and had done since the 1970s and it only came to light he had a shed load of tapes (literally in a shed) six years or so after he died and the house was sold after his widow died, according to the Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse documentary.

lostshows.com, I think we said before, isn't the authoritative source it once was for missing episodes.

With regards to Paul Daniels Wipeout I believe the contestant chat was removed so the show could fit in a 30 minute Challenge slot, otherwise it would have ended up in an awkward 40 minute slot. They still have these edits as the show reappeared on Challenge last year a couple of days or so after Daniels died.

When it lists most of Series 5 and 6 of Bullseye as "missing", when Challenge have shown them in their entirety countless times, I think the best conclusion is that it's a crock of ****.

I'm pretty sure even UK Gold and Granada Plus had been showing episodes listed as "missing" back in the 90s, so they really don't have an excuse.