Challenge TV launched on Freeview!

But they tend to use a silly quick fade to white transition so it looks like part of a clip show.

Challenge News

Sky have added a locally generated 'Press Red' prompt on Challenge and Challenge +1 on the Sky platform. This appears in the top right of the picture over all programmes and adverts. Most of the time it says 'Press Red' but when Family Fortunes is on it says 'Play Family Fortunes'. It probably does something similar when Classic Who Wants to be a Millionaire is on. Pressing red displays a menu at the bottom of the screen with various options, most of which take the viewer to the Sky Games portal, either to the front page or a specific game (WWTBAM, Family Fortunes and Beehive Bedlam currently). There are also links to Sky Bingo and Sky Vegas and a page of text promoting challenge.co.uk and the Challenge Facebook page. Despite the menu itself and the page of text being the only new content, it is actually presented quite nicely and hasn't just been thrown together. There is a big full screen Challenge logo when each section loads.

Talking of the Facebook page, what is it that attracts idiots to this channel? The same idiots that ruined the Challenge forum are now doing the same to the Facebook page.

Who the bloody hell calls themselves David Adultnature??!!

David Adultnature does of course. David Hollins is another interesting character too. Being called David myself, I am frightened to post.

In other news, Challenge now have a third promo to go with their Comedy Mondays and WWTBAM ones. It promotes physical shows and starts off with a clip from Gladiators with someone doing silly voices over it. It then shows various clips from Takeshi's Castle, Ninja Warrior and even Fun House.

and it seem those people seem to know better than challenge itself, which is not help by the fact Challenge are not commenting,

I was on there myself, but soon got sick of people requesting shows all the time (though I only asked 2 things and that's it.)

Nice to see another bloody conduit for Sky's gambling services, complete with old "SKY games" logo. Also when you press Sky Bingo you get the old Sky 1/2/3 logos. Since one of them isn't around any more (at least by that name) seems a bit lazy!

Also, I thought Sky had given up on interactive/pay2play stuff?

A couple just lost out on a sunbed on 3-2-1. I guess not many gameshows could boast the prize of skin cancer!

I think the sunbed was a semi regular prize on 3-2-1. A few weeks ago one of the prizes was a time share apartment with the first 3 years of maintenance paid for. Thanks Ted, a prize that will start costing money after 3 years! Fur coats also featured in earlier series.

I have vague memories of a St. Bernard dog being revealed as one of the prizes in one episode. Whether this represented something else (A years supply of brandy? A skiing trip?) or if the couple had actually won a massive dog which they had to take back home on the bus, I don't recall.

A greyhound was also revealed as a prize on Take your Pick once. After the contestant got over the shock of winning a dog, it was explained that he had actually won the proceeds of the dog's races for 6 months.

Interesting that the last two Saturday episodes of 3-2-1 haven't featured a car and both couples seemed to have worked out which clue was the holiday and then rejected it in the belief that they must be left with a car. They were actually left with a camphor wood chest and some patio furniture. The episode shown last Sunday featured two cars.

According to Wikipedia, Ted Rogers claimed in a 1996 interview that "the Oxbridge lot who had got hold of TV by now didn't want it as it was too downmarket for them, even though it was still getting 12 million viewers". I'm wondering if it was more a case of The Krypton Factor syndrome where they changed the format too much and it just wasn't as good as it once was. The 1987 series without the themed set and costumes each week, the standard on-the-buzzers gameshow format instead of The 1000 to 1 quiz and the stereotypical 80s set certainly doesn't appeal to me in 2011 as much as the 1986 or earlier series does. Even Dusty Bin has a smaller role in 1987. Though there was probably less than a year between the 1986 and 1987 series, I just can't imagine acts like Norman Collier, Fay Presto or the fantastic Libby Roberts Dancers appearing on the 1987 series which is currently on Challenge. The acts in 1987 all seemed to be 'cool' and/or newcomers. Some weeks they only have singers on which is just boring.

In other news, I see the 'Press Red' prompt is reduced to a single red dot when the wrestling is on. This is a courtesy that Challenge don't even extend to their advertisers. Maybe wrestling fans just wouldn't stand for it?

Back to 3-2-1. I see Challenge (I assume) put in an earlier shot of the audience to cover the editing of the viewers competition in the episode shown today. This was a much better attempt at editing than has been seen in previous episodes, although it was still terrible and IMHO unnecessary.

Anyone know which series of the Krypton Factor they're going to be showing next saturday? I'm guessing they're re-winding back to the 1986 series as usual?

Also the 1993 series of Bullseye ended on friday and to me it seemed very short as Jim only introduced that series two weeks ago, I know they show two episodes back to back but it did seem shorter than other series.

This is an interesting clip. It is from Spain and it shows the final episode of the 6th series of Un, Dos, Tres (1,2,3) where they show a clip of the English version of their show, 3-2-1. It features terrible 3D graphics from Yorkshire and a terrible Margaret Thatcher impression from Spain.


Here is another interesting clip. It shows Ted Rogers in Spain along with some presenters from other versions of 3-2-1. I am not sure if he understands Spanish and/or Portuguese or not from this clip.

YouTube just gets better and better for 3-2-1 fans. Challenge TV's The A-Z of 3-2-1 has been uploaded to YouTube.