The National Lottery: Break The Safe

Well some thought will have to go into designing it around the lottery, even if it is after the format is first designed. Formats are adaptable to allow this.

I have to agree that Camelot are the winners in the deal though - I do have to say that the lack of success of the draws on other channels is probably down to the fact they always ended up outside the main 5 channels.

To be honest I'm sick and fed up with the BBC bringing out new game shows themed around the National Lottery draws on Saturday evenings. I'm sure I can't be the only one who just wants to see the Lotto draw.

My suggestion: limit the National Lottery draws (Thunderball, Lotto, etc.) to a 5 to 10 minute standalone show. If they want a separate game show (before or afterwards), let them have one as a separate programme, but don't connect it with the Lottery.

Last night, just like most other Saturday nights, I recorded The National Lottery: Break The Safe and subsequently just watched the Lotto draw itself (I fast forwarded what I call the "junk" beforehand).

What is it you like about the lottery draw so much? What is your favourite bit?



If you aren't going to watch it live, why not just look at the numbers on the World Wide Web or Ceefax?

Oh dear:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bbc-lotto-fix-contestants-accuse-2149380

And Nick Knowles's thoughts on it:
https://twitter.com/MrNickKnowles/status/366516934314950658

Seems somewhat of a non-story. Nobody won so they gave all contestants a second chance to win with modified rules. This pair crying "fix" lost again - and are probably selling their story as it's possible (purely speculation) they were the only ones where refilming happened to not go home with more.

OK, it's not ideal and such issues should have been sorted at the pilot stage. Ultimately though if they were so bothered by this "fix" they should have made themselves unavailable that day, regardless of any threats from producers.

I wonder how many episodes were effected in this way. In the story presented here, the contestants lost on the first attempt and then lost again on the second (even though they would have won on the first attempt if it had been played with the revised rules) so no one actually lost out.

I am guessing no team actually won when the game was played using the original rules, which is presumably why they decided to change the format and play the final again. If a team had won and then were asked back to record the final again using different rules and they either then went on to lose or it was fixed so they won again under the new rules then that would be a bigger story.

I think what the BBC did wrong was to try to cover this up. Firstly, people are interested in the making of television programmes, so why try to hide how something like this is made? Secondly, when the story inevitably comes out it's going to be with extra spin from the Daily Mail which is never going to be a good thing. Thirdly, it just looks suspicious even if they didn't actually do anything wrong.

Apparently, the gameshow Perfection, also hosted by one Nick Knowles, had a problem where due to the design of the set contestants could potentially see the answers to some questions. Those episodes were scrapped and the contestants were invited back to play again. I don't believe there was any attempt to keep this secret. I don't know why things were different this time
Source: http://ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Perfection

Apparently this claim that the end game was played twice with different rules was made by someone posting on Bother's Bar after the first episode aired...
Source: https://twitter.com/BothersBar/status/361414915522699264
Source: https://twitter.com/BothersBar/status/361415087984099328

The same site also confirms that the pilot was an 'all or nothing' game...
Source: http://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=4217

When I was at the final 2 recordings, the couple that got through to the final of the first recording actually won, but the couple on the second recording didn't.

And Nick did say that this was a brand new format, but no mention of said alleged changes in the Daily Mirror article.

I just think they women from Wales were just bad losers, I'm no body language expert but their's was off the richter scale...

What do you mean 'no mention'? You were there. What rules did they play by when you went to the recording(s)?

Well I thought something was strange during the second episode final from last week, they answered 3 questions and yet had more time, I'm pretty sure they took 2 seconds and £10,000 but yet it sounded like when they took that £10,000 they also gained another second on top of that.

I thought it would have been either one or the other...

You are not really answering the question. When you went to a recording of the programme, did both contestants need to press their button within the time limit to win the money and get nothing if they failed or could they win half of the money if only one of them pressed the button within the time limit?

They could win half the money if one of them pressed within the time limit, if both of them failed, they got nothing...

Those are apparently the revised rules, so it sounds like during recording of the show they realised, after recording a block or two, that the game was too difficult, so re-recorded the final round of shows that had already been recorded, and changed the rules for subsequent recordings (one of which you attended?)