Coronavirus | Schedule Changes

I hope Richard was referring to the government minister rather than the newsreader introducing the briefing...

Sorry, yes, the minister. I'll see if I can find the tweet.

*edited* - thought it was an Osman tweet, but maybe it wasn't.

Richard Osman says #Pointless ratings fluctuate depending on who's leading the coronavirus briefing that day: "Rishi Sunak is the Bradley Walsh of the Cabinet." https://t.co/T0ZKzHVour pic.twitter.com/ydL5zcEwzU

— Radio Times (@RadioTimes) May 26, 2020

There's no way they won't repeat any episodes without the new round, they're showing new episodes of Pointless Celebrities without them (plus Richard flitting from clean-shaven to bearded every other week). They happily show episodes of Bargain Hunt from before and after the (seemingly unsuccessful) recent revamp, in the same week.

IIRC when the format was changed from the five starting pairs down to the current four (and the third round format was changed), the older pre-format change ones haven't been seen since on the home network, although I dare say they may have turned up on Challenge.

I think Pointless Celebrities is intended to be stand-alone, it doesn't roll over like the daytime version does. If the jackpot is won on Celebrity, happy days. If it isn't, have £500 anyway.

You can hardly base it on the fact they don't show the first series anymore, not least because it wasn't on all year round in those days so there wasn't any need to show repeats between new episodes, they showed another quiz instead.

That's the point though - the series link and many live viewers don't jump over to BBC2 so probably best to just hold back the episode till the next BBC1 airing.

Re: the Jackpot Jumper Bonus Booster round. Think the potential extra £500 a show would be better going towards tweaking the rules for the final to offer any winners who get three pointless answers double the jackpot.

I've never really understood the complaints about the jackpot on Pointless and how low it is, I honestly don't care how much they're winning, and I'm more excited if they're playing for £1000 on a subject I know about than £25,000 on a subject I have no interest in. The game is the thing, not the prize.

Richard mentioned on the show the other day that people always ask why they don't give them a bonus for getting more than one pointless answer in the final, as it came after a final where they rattled off about a dozen pointless answers about the NBA, and he said that it would mean contestants could, if they were very good, rattle off dozens of answers.

It's a bit like Family Fortunes as well when they introduced the bonus prize for getting all the top answers, it meant the show always ended on a bit of an anti-climax if they didn't do it, and made it all fall a bit flat even if they'd won the jackpot. And similarly there'd be a bit of a disappointment here if there was a special prize in addition to the jackpot and they didn't win it.

It's interesting about the mentality of British game show contestants, the money's a nice bonus but at the end of the day you're doing it for fun as evident with game shows that don't have cash prizes like Countdown, Only Connect, Mastermind etc

Absolutely agree about the subject being more important than the money at stake. Richard's defence doesn't make sense though as they can only submit three answers, and it is so rare it is an achievement worth noting above a standard win, just as for example a single player winning The Chase is more notable than 2/3/4 winning, even if the money isn't that high.

A fair point about how it might lead to wins being anti-climatic but I think the nature of the way they do the final is it is often the second or third answer submitted that is Pointless so I don't think it would be a huge issue.

And I think the jokes about the low jackpot on Pointless are only light hearted

Not that it effects viewers enjoyment of the programme more that Pointless is quite difficult and when some contestants win they only end up with just £2,000 whereas if you know your own name you get about that on Tipping Point

The bit about it being fun when it’s a topic you know about is why I go on and off Pointless, you can go days with topics I don’t know the slightest thing about, and then you get one like last week about game show hosts, and I can reel of that Keith Chegwin hosted Sale of the Century!

I don’t really understand the need for the jackpot to roll over on Pointless. It doesn’t seem fair on the contestants to base their prize on what happened in the previous episode. Surely a slightly higher but consistent jackpot would be better?

It’s to insure that each episode costs roughly the same amount. If it’s won 4 days in a row, or won after 2 weeks, it costs roughly the same. It’s not like the concept of a rollover is unique to Pointless, pub quizzes and Lotteries do it.

It’s worked particularly well for Eggheads, meaning they’ve had teams win £75,000, but each episodes prize budget is always a grand.