Children In Need 2019

Children In Need is this friday (15th November if anyone is reading this after that day).

And it's the same as last years. Hurray.

We got some big moments coming up like....

Bargain Hunt for Children In Need, Eastenders does Strictly, The Hit List and Dragon Den does I'll get this.

I dont know what I'll get this is.

We've already seen some presentation this year as BBC One ditched oneness and an better rendition of what the oneness ident should have been.

BBC Two programme, in which "Five celebrities meet at a restaurant for a fancy meal. The catch is they have to play games between courses and the loser will have to pay for everyone's dinner."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0brjptb

In this case, the five celebrities are the Dragons. The series started in June.

Well the issue there is that, if you are advertising a charity skit based on a regular show, the regular show needs to be well known enough to make an impact.


Isn’t EastEnders does Strictly actually two items merged into one? The Children in Need Strictly and the EastEnders song and dance routine?

It actually started in November of last year, around the time of the BBC Two revamp, as I recall seeing lots of trails for it. Are they doing a Children in Need version to coincide with the start of a second series?

The June run must've been a repeat then - I was looking at the "Last on" listing on episode 1's page, which says 23rd June 2019.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00052dm

Ah, that appears to be a Have I Got a Bit More News for You style extended version of the first series, with each episode being 45 minutes instead of 30.

It's a good little show though I've only caught one episode this summer - think they used it as filler rather than gave it a full repeat run.

Sadly though the telethon itself is pretty poor nowadays, and not just through missing Wogan. They might as well just repeat the same one year after year. Rylan's Ka-Ry-Oke on Radio 2 was good fun though to drop in and out of, and raised £900k. I'm assuming that'll be Radio 2's main contribution now Chris Evans has moved on - didn't he do a Car Rally and certainly some kind of auction, and I'm not sure if Zoe Ball is continuing with the latter.

EastEnders pretty much does Strictly every year, just under a different name or segment and with the benefit of pre-recording it. They seem to like Queen, having done Queen tributes twice (it says here) in 2011 and 2013.

I'll Get This seems to date from last year, 6th November 2018 at 10pm, that episode repeated 20th of December 2018 at 11:15pm. The June airings appear to be "extra helpings", which seems to be code for "padding it out to fill a 45 minute slot" as it was originally only 30 minutes. Looks like the extra helpings were done at the time but weren't aired until this year:
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/entertainment/ill-get-this-bbc2/5134303.article

The telethon night has gradually been reduced over the years, in the same way Comic Relief was reduced.

I remember the night would run until 2.00am, but now they give up at 12.30am and for the following 90 minutes show a repeat of a charity documentary they showed earlier in November - much the same way Comic Relief come to an end around 12.30am.

The good old days of a great line for the evening have long gone, especially what was the usually traditional BBC newsreaders contribution - who can forget the time they did the Time Warp with Jeremy Vine in tights?

But the last hour was always mostly repeats from earlier in the evening, there's no point just continuing for the sake of it.

Although the evening might end earlier, there's loads more in primetime than there ever was. The Got It Covered that's being repeated was first shown for ninety minutes right in the middle of primetime. You never got that in the past, nor the big pop concerts in recent years. In the late eighties and early nineties all you had in the way of build-up was a preview on CBBC on the Thursday and a half hour doc about where last year's money went which would be shown after ten o'clock. And The One Show has been about virtually nothing but over the last fortnight. You didn't get a highlights show over the weekend either.

In his autobiography, published in 2000, Tel said he didn't think the Beeb gave Children in Need much support, and he said they were always asking why it couldn't be more like Comic Relief which was much more glamorous. Certainly in the nineties it seemed like a bit of a contractual obligation for the Beeb, outside the night itself you didn't hear much about it and nobody fashionable would appear on it, it felt a bit out of date. Whereas now it's promoted as one of the Beeb's major autumn entertainment highlights and full of big stars.

Comic Relief always seems to be able to attract more bigger stars for their sketches and performances than Children in Need ever does.

Maybe the pulling power of Richard Curtis helps Comic Relief and Sport Relief, something which Children in Need does not have.

Probably the fact that Comic Relief is organised by a bunch of comedians themselves.

The charity concerts Gary Barlow organised for CiN had a similarly impressive line up because Gary himself booked the artists rather than BBC producers.