Challenge TV launched on Freeview!

That edit is far more likely to have happened at Carlton International's end than Challenge's, perhaps prior to sale to a more sensitive country.

Roy Walker's Gameshow Moments is a name which is used to refer to the whole 5-part series, with each programme having different names.

That description was also used for Roy Walker's TV Bloomers last week, which obviously should have been changed to something else for Gameshow Moments.

Wouldn't the country in question do their own edits though, more likely for advertising breaks and local standards than anything else? After all Carlton are perfectly happy to send out final programme edits complete with viewer competitions and "write to us if you want to be on the next series" appeals on them for series that have been out of production for years, and then it's up to the buying broadcaster to either make a perfect edit or a dog's dinner to remove these entities.

The Snake Charmer incident will live on indefinitely through folklore, though it's somewhat debatable as to which version was originally locked off - with or without hand movement - in the original edit. Has anybody contacted Carlton?

That episode of Catchphrase was shown in recent years without the obscuring on Challenge. I think it's only since the channel launched on Freeview that the edit has been included. I think channels tend to be a bit more over zealous with the edits when they're free to view.

Having said that, some time in the last year I was watching Porridge on GOLD and at the end scene where Fletch is sticking two fingers up they actually blurred this out. I do wonder why programmes that are shown so frequently suddenly get edits like that.

Breakdown during Crystal Maze tonight - went to black just after the titles (with the audio continuing). Then cut to a Challenge "temporary fault" caption for a few mins (with music), before eventually the prog started again. The schedule will probably be behind for a while now I guess!

Given the breaks during the Catchphrase double-bill don't contain trailers, they're probably back on track now.

Probably also helps snipping out the viewer's competition bits from each of these 1998 Catchphrase episodes also knocks a minute or two from the show timing...

</game show geek>

However bad the edits may seen, I don't think they are done live to make up time!

Seems that they are now running about 3 minutes late. The recorded VO over the credits of The Crystal Maze only started speaking when the endcap appeared and then got cut off and programmes are starting at :03 or :33.

Does anyone know what hours Challenge have to hit exactly nowadays? Until quite recently they always hit the 5pm junction exactly and would often have a second or two of a static logo just before 5pm if they were running early. This was a throw back to the time when they were only available from 5pm on analogue cable systems but 24 hour on other platforms. Are they now broadcasting 24 hours on all platforms?

I wasn't implying they were being done live; I was merely pointing out the edits to Catchphrase (and Family Fortunes) could have been an indirect help; but dropping the trails in the breaks has been the main contributing factor to getting Challenge back to schedule.

Which they have, they've gone into "In It to Win It" at 19.59.

Talking of credits, whether it's been mentioned before I don't know but I spotted a new (to me anyway) Granada International Media endcap after the Central endcap at the end of the the 11pm showing last night of Bullseye. Wonder if Challenge have received new prints of the 1990 series of Bullseye?

Challenge quite regularly runs off the scheduled airing. Last night's Bullseye started at 11:29pm but didn't finish until after midnight but it did seem to have an overly long ad break in the middle. These automated play-out systems have strange logic sometimes if left to their own devices. I would presume the trailers are only present as an afterthought in the priority of things if the logics decree they're needed but they are all different lengths and appear to go out in a random order so if that is the case it's hardly surprising the schedule drifts off on occasion.

I remember when Disney launched ABC1. It's timings for programming was rock solid and pretty much everything started on the dot. Quite neat actually when the system was running about eight channels all at the same time.

I'm not sure when it happened but it seems Sky have launched a full site for Challenge now rather than the basic "we're now owned by Sky" holding page.

http://challenge.co.uk/

Much nicer than the old VMTV-managed Challenge site!

I'm pretty sure the 'edited' version is up on YouTube with a red/white DOG, which would date the edit as well before the Freeview launch.

RE: Endcaps
It's probably a series Challenge lost rights to at some stage, and the new print arrived when the rights were picked back up.



A fair few months and a fair few pages respectively back. It's prettier but has less of use; essentially it's a conduit for Sky's gambling services.

I'm not sure I know of any TV playout systems which have logic in them - they just do exactly as they're told.

There is occasional potential for overrun if a media planner has assumed a part of a programme is 11 minutes, but then when the tape op has come to put it on server, it's turned out to be 11m57s - then the rest of the schedule needs tweaking. Ad breaks are strictly controlled by Ofcom guidelines in terms of timing (so you can't have too many minutes per clock hour), and the advertisers won't be happy if you have to drop their ad. The trails are probably expertly placed by a promotions planner - but sometimes in the event of an over- (or under-) run, there's not a lot else you can play with.