Challenge TV - September 2011 onwards

Surely it's been shown before?

I'm not sure if they are showing new [to Challenge [TV]] episodes of Pointless at the moment or not. An episode of Pointless was shown at 21:00 yesterday without incident (or least no incident in the first 30 seconds, that is all I watched).

In other news, on the episode of Bullseye shown today, Jim Bowen said we were well in to spring.

Now, Wikipedia says this series started on 25 September 1983. Today was the 16th day of Challenge [TV] showing Series 3. Although they missed out one episode they showed the first episode twice, so that should mean they are still showing the 16th episode today. That's assuming they are showing them in order. Certainly up until now the episodes appear to have been shown in order, Bowen sometimes makes reference to the previous episode and in all cases so far, what he says fits in with the previous episode shown on Challenge [TV]. The alternating between professional dart player/non professional celebrity dart player during the Bronze Bully round has also been kept.

So, how come we are suddenly well in to spring? If this series was shown every Sunday from 25th September 1983 then the episode shown today should be from the January 1, 1984, well in to winter and yesterday's episode should have been the Christmas one (it wasn't).

So, who is wrong? Me, Challenge [TV] or Wikipedia?

I'm sure Challenge are at it, I asked them about Family Fortunes from 2001, which was Les Dennis' last series, and I asked why it was on Challenge a couple of years before not edited, bit only a week ago it was edited. And they said when they received the tapes they were edited like that. My point is, how can they be over edited if Challenge has already shown unedited apart from the competition after the commercial break?

When they showed the episode with Nick Owen playing the bronze bully round I'm sure Jim mentioned that some of the TV-am team were on the Christmas special, with the end credit dating the episode as 1983. Now I've not seen all of the Bullseye's Challenge have shown, but I've yet to see the Christmas 1983 edition. They're quite funny about them as the only Special I've seen of Bullseye was the 1991 christmas special.

I have seen 1989 one, not all episodes were broarcast every week. It was never network with some companies showing it at 2pm or 4pm or 6pm.

Check out Youtube and you can see the 1988 Special with, Roy Walker, the late Bob Holness and Les Dennis, also pairing Les Dennis is the late Jocky Wilson, then check out the 1992 Special on YouTube.

I believe this refers to the new Challenge [TV] (AKA Sky) receiving the tapes from the old Challenge [TV] (AKA Virgin) rather than receiving them from the archive. I think they explained this on their Facebook page at some point. Basically, they are blaming Virgin for editing the episodes.



I believe all the episodes including the one shown today have had a 1983 copyright date so far. I wonder how common it was to change the copyright date on programmes in the early 80s? Nowadays even recorded programmes shown on the 1st January have a copyright date of the new year, even though the programme would have been made during the previous year. Did Central do that in 1983/1984? I'm thinking maybe they didn't.

I wasn't that surprised to not see the Christmas episode (which features TV-AM's Anne Diamond) but I was half expecting Bowen to wish us a happy new year in the episode shown today or at least for it to be an episode from early January 1984.

I just checked the Nick Owen episode again after your comment. Two quotes from Bowen stand out...

"A gentleman who breathed life in to TV-AM last year, will you please welcome the presentation talents of Nick Owen." This might suggest that Nick Owen started at TV-AM last year. Wikipedia says that Nick Owen started as the main presenter of TV-AM in 1983, so this would place the episode of Bullseye as being made for broadcast in 1984.

"We had Anne on our Christmas show, your co-presenter of course." This suggests it was made after the 1983 Christmas episode.

Sadly, it does look like Challenge [TV] are showing episodes out of order. Which makes it seem strange that they dropped episode 12 due to problems with the tape. If they aren't showing them in order, they could have just put another episode on.

Back then endcap date was when it was made. It took stv till march before new episode of high road were given new year dates.

It's the same with most itv companys. I was always lead to believe bullseye was made weekly.

I forgot to say it was not even networked for every Sunday. Many a time run would take longer on some companies. Instead of straight 22 or 15 weeks. It ended being 30 or 20 weeks.

Episode 16, having manually worked it out mysef, would have had an original transmission date, assuming the Wiki dates are correct, of January 8th, 1984. Where have you got January 1st from?

As to spring, as previously stated, more plausible a lot of other regions stretched the run out a bit, were Sundays still locally run by the ITV companies in 1983/4?

Actually, I was correct about Friday's episode being from 1st January 1984 (if they were shown in order) but I was incorrect about it being the 16th day of Challenge [TV] showing Bullseye. It was actually the 15th day. Monday will be the 16th day, which as you say would have been the 8th January 1984. None of it matters now anyway as it is pretty clear that they are not showing them in the original order.

True - there was also a programme which started in the early days of Central but for the first couple of months had an ATV frontcap for the same reason. I forget what it was, but it's been repeated on Yesterday within the last year (frontcaps intact).