NW
Going back sometime ago I had a response from Challenge on Twitter, as Gary Glitter was one of the answers in a late 1980's episode of Family Fortunes, their policy was that they would keep mentions in, but cut out any actual appearances.
@sgordon_the87 as an answer we tend to kerp things like that in. Obvs we would cut any apperarance of him or impression
— Challenge TV (@ChallengeTV) January 13, 2015
JA
Maybe with today's Finders Keepers, as whatever was cut involved one of the "incorrect answers", they were able to cut it with out massively affecting the rest of the show (though, as I said, still leaving the obvious artifacts of the same question asked twice an a row, and one team already knowing where one of the answers was).
As Rolf Harris was an actual answer, you couldn't have cut him out without affecting the run of the show- otherwise you'd have had one of the teams winning a room without explanation, and one of the screens being blurred throught the rest of the round.
Would be interesting if someone could track down a recording of this episode from the original broadcast so we can see what was actually cut.
As Rolf Harris was an actual answer, you couldn't have cut him out without affecting the run of the show- otherwise you'd have had one of the teams winning a room without explanation, and one of the screens being blurred throught the rest of the round.
Would be interesting if someone could track down a recording of this episode from the original broadcast so we can see what was actually cut.
NJ
This comes up fairly regularly. I think it basically boils down to legalities and protecting themselves. It's not unique to Challenge, the BBC have dropped all Savile/DLT fronted appearances from their TOTP reruns, and they were pulled up (216 complaints) when that episode of The Tweenies was repeated showing one of the characters doing a Savile impression in all but name, and I think that was the turning point for other broadcasters. 216 complaints for a CBeebies channel airing!
Challenge also pulled an entire episode of Pointless because it featured a question on Rolf Harris songs.
The Gary Glitter impersonator on Stars In Their Eyes was out of their hands as it was never given to them by ITV. The repeat goes from, I think, episode 1 to episode 3 of that particular series, with the missing episode only appears as a fragment of the winner's performance, which fortunately the Glitter impersonator didn't win his episode as that would, as things turned out, have jettisoned the entire series repeat-wise.
Neil Jones
Founding member
If it was... seems a bit ridiculous to cut out every reference to these people as if they never existed. Yes, they did horrible things, but they still existed, they were still very popular, and these shows were made before we knew what they did.
This comes up fairly regularly. I think it basically boils down to legalities and protecting themselves. It's not unique to Challenge, the BBC have dropped all Savile/DLT fronted appearances from their TOTP reruns, and they were pulled up (216 complaints) when that episode of The Tweenies was repeated showing one of the characters doing a Savile impression in all but name, and I think that was the turning point for other broadcasters. 216 complaints for a CBeebies channel airing!
Challenge also pulled an entire episode of Pointless because it featured a question on Rolf Harris songs.
The Gary Glitter impersonator on Stars In Their Eyes was out of their hands as it was never given to them by ITV. The repeat goes from, I think, episode 1 to episode 3 of that particular series, with the missing episode only appears as a fragment of the winner's performance, which fortunately the Glitter impersonator didn't win his episode as that would, as things turned out, have jettisoned the entire series repeat-wise.
JA
Can anyone here remember the first episode of Finders Keepers shown on Challenge a few years back where one of the questions was "Who says Yabba Dabba Doo" and the answer was "Yogi Bear", some wonderful research failure there, especially as surely at least Neil or the contestants must surely have known it was wrong, even if nobody else on the production team had ever seen The Flintstones!
JA
I don't remember seeing this final series of Finders Keepers at the time. It's pretty dire, why did they mess around with the format so much?
:-(
A former member
I don't remember seeing this final series of Finders Keepers at the time. It's pretty dire, why did they mess around with the format so much?
Remember by this time the series was in the hands of STV, and there had moved the series to Glasgow. STV looked at it and thought its a bit too much like its more popular fun house.