The END of Ftn!

I like Gordon's apology to Channel TV viewers for missing them off!

and the difficulty caused by Yorkshire Television serving the top of easyt anglia!

Gwyneth Strong on Krypton Factor - its like watching her in Only Fools and Horses.

Thanks for uploading the intelligence round onto YouTube, tvmercia.

The "A Granada Production for ITV" endcaps were back on tonight's episodes.

Spotted this on YouTube - The Krypton Factor US Style from 1981. It's so appallingly bad its no wonder it only lasted six weeks. The equivalent of "Mental Agility" was a go on a computer game and the "Assault Course" was something that pre-dated Takeshi's Castle by five years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gaNRpZ6bqE

I like the way the Americans pronounced the word Krypton!

Nice use of the Coronation Street set (in the time when using it on other programmes could have been possible) on the Observation Round in the first Krypton Factor episode on ftn tonight. Wouldn't have got me any points, though.

The 10th Series of Bullseye started tonight on FTN. Didn't the bronze Bully get won at the end of series 9?

Also, on wikipedia it says that no series of the Krypton Factor was made in 1994, does anyone know why this was?

Wiki was right on that one, there was no series in 1994, possibly because they were taking time out and thinking of revamping Krypton aswell, which is what happened when it did return in 1995.

Granted Krypton did need refreshing, once you've seen the show it can get a little tiresome, so a revamp was a good idea, it was just the fact the 1995 one was so bad, I remember the Assault course looked very Crystal Maze.

Although 1995 was bad, I wouldn't mind seeing it once again just to compare it to pre-95 episodes. Saying that Challenge have never showed any episode beyond 1992.

1995 seemed to be a penultimate year for gameshows ending - Bullseye and Blockbusters (1 off special of the ITV version) also ended that year. Perhaps this was partly due to poor revamps and a boom in Food and DIY shows.

Blockbusters finished in 1993, but it was one of those programmes that went out at different times in different regions throughout the run, and about 100 never went out on Tyne Tees Television at all. They ended up mailing the episodes out to the kids on the episodes that weren't shown in that region.

Blockbusters has seen four revivals since it finished on ITV first time round. Sky One picked it up and I believe carried on where ITV left off. BBC Two had a go as well but it was crap. Sky had another go after that with Liza Tarbuck, which wasn't that bad but it wasn't the same. Apparently another one-off episode with Vernon Kay was (or is about to be?) done somewhere in 2007.

To be fair the Liza Tarbuck version wasn't that bad, granted it wasn't the original but it wasn't too different, the same idea but the graphics had been updated, but it was never the same without Holeness.

I remember reading somewhere that the first Sky One revival was made by Central and some ITV stations did screen it, I still have a TV Guide from 1997 somewhere and Blockbusters was being shown on in Aspel form on BBC2 and in Holeness form on Border ITV, possibly one of only few Regions that were still showing it back in 1997.

According to UKGameshows.co.uk, some ITV regions screened Blockbusters after Sky had picked it up in 1994.

The Liza Tarbuck era wasn't as bad as it perhaps could have been, but some things are just better left unchanged.