Euromillions on BBC1

So none of us are £95m richer this morning then!


Euromillions last night on BBC1 then, a couple of hours after the draw was made. Tim Vincent hosted, while the Voice of the Balls was presents to introduce him and announce the jackpot, but not for the draw itself, which was done by Tim in-vision.

Still the canned clapping though at the beginning, which is ridiculous considering there is no longer any pretence there is a studio audience. No pointless time checks though - I guess with the draw taking place earlier they'd have recorded the whole thing.


The draw wasn't shown full screen - just on a screen in the studio, which seemed rather pointless.



Anyhow, good to see what is now arguably the flagship lottery draw on BBC1, even if it is ridiculously late. I suspect if it was anything other than BBC lottery winner Jonathan Ross, it would be slotted in at 10.35pm.

So has the Euromillions Draw never been live in the UK at all, I can't believe that.

I thought UK Gold do something (or did recently) with the Euromillions draw on a Friday night?

Well it was originally on Sky One, then moved to UKTV Gold.


I think Sky might have shown it live around 9pm, but I'd guess UKTV Gold didn't as it was on later.


I guess it be virtually impossible to find a time which suited all the countries involved to have it live.

Tim Vincent presented the whole thing sounding like some poet. Alan introduced the show but not much from him this time.

Yeah, they did. Not anymore though.

So has it now moved to BBC1 permanently?

Yup - 11.35pm every Friday.

I think it's a shame they couldn't do something a bit more adventurous with the Euromillions draw and tie it up in some form, simulcasting live across the countries taking part. I'm not suggesting it needs to be a spectacular Eurovision Song Contest sort of production, but I'd have thought making it an 'event' television programme might improve the draws appeal and status.

That said, some lottery 'programmes' in Europe have traditionally been almost junction items in the past - with airtime of a minute or so. When the UK started the lottery we had enormous one hour long programmes with winners from the audience being able to start the draw. Even before the gameshow wraparound formats started, the regular National Lottery programme featured 'live' music performances, the infamous and strangely compelling Mystic Meg segment and other sequences. Maybe as the lottery programme here has decended into something that could almost be prerecorded (and maybe EuroMillions was!) there's simply no call for a live pan-european programme and all the hassle and cost that might entail...

Over here the National Lottery draw has always been done in about a minute - Ronan Collins introduced, followed by the KMPG observer, and then the balls rolling striaght away. Once done a final confirmation of the numbers and then a fade out.

These days it takes a bit longer, what with Lotto +1 and Lotto +2 draws too, and Ronan Collins has been axed in favour of younger female presenters.

The Euromillions draw is done in similar quick fashion on a Friday night. This doesn't mean the Irish National Lottery hasn't been a fan of long format programmes - Winning Streak (based on a sratch card and a big wheel) and its summer equivilant Fan and Fortune are examples - but they've never incorporated the main draw (branded Lotto, just like in the UK) into one.

They're giving themselves a bit of a makeover this year (dropping the "An Post" from the corporate logo - they are owned by the Post Office - and "The", where it was used) and unifying their about 30 billion brand names (well, maybe thirty) under one logo. PDF for anyone interested...

http://www.lotto.ie/downloads/Corporate_Identity.pdf

Euromillions was essentially just a quick draw like you say last night, but with an unnecessary introduction from the voice of the balls. In fact as it's done in Paris it could easily be done with the BBC just showing the draw and the CA talking over it.


With it being just the one draw perhaps it works a bit better than with the others when they just have the 5-10 min programme to show 3 draws - but as we've often said if they cut things like the "timechecks" and the pointless timechecks, it would look a much better produced programme.

It's just a shame that only 9 EU Countries (sorry that's 8 EU countries and Switzerland) have the Euromillion. We do not have it, yet, in Netherlands and so had to get tickets via dad!!!

But the presentation of the show on Friday was completely bland and a waste of five minutes. i must admit since moving to NL I have got used to the lottery being juxta points of either commercials or of shows such as Postcode Lotterij Deal or No Deal!!! The show comes first and the lottery is only about 1 minutes worth of television - how it should be!!!