Challenge TV - September 2011 onwards

Yes - it came as a surprise to me that none of the first period of Family Fortunes was shot in Birmingham, all Elstree until Lenton Lane (I have a feeling the first Lenton Lane episode was the first network production at Lenton Lane).

The series briefly moved to Broad Street when resurrected with Les Dennis, although I think by the next series it was back at Lenton Lane.

About 100 are missing of Celebrity Squares, handy that Bob recorded 50 - hopefully they're not ones ATV kept as well. I can't see Challenge airing domestic copies which is a shame.

Broad Street's studio one was a terrible shape for game shows, which is why I guess they didn't use for such where possible.

All I can say is, thank God the boards were changed in the second series. All that red and green was a bit... surreal.
Pleasantly pleased to see the ATV ident intact, though not surprising considering other early 1980s Central material have had their Central idents left on as well.
Didn't quite follow the scoring system and to be honest I'm surprised they didn't go with the "pounds for points" thing earlier than they did. The whole "30 on Showbiz, oh dear you've got 10 on spelling" thing was unworkable in my view. Almost as if ATV didn't want to give any money away.

Given the very serious criminal allegations against a certain soap actor earlier this week, I guess there won't be any
more repeats of "Showbiz Darts" on Challenge anytime soon, if it all.

I think Challenge may be able to find something to replace it for now, seeing as it wasn't exactly clogging up the schedules.

Did I hear Nick Owen doing the Bullseye voiceovers?

That would have been the first time he would have been heard nationally surely, as he wouldn't have been seen on screen until TVAM?

Could well have been him - I was trying to place the voice when I watched it the other night

Yep I think it was Nick Owen that done the first series, then Tony was brought in from series 2 onwards...

Hope Nick's got his royalties?

It is Nick, he's appears in an episode in series 3 or 4 as the celebrity darts thrower, and Jim mentions that Nick was voiceover on the first series.

Is that question open to everyone? To be honest, I think that while he should be entitled to any royalties owed to him (if any), I don't think he'd be doing too badly without them.

To answer that, I recall a radio interview with Gordon Burns several years ago asking whether he gets paid everytime The Krypton Factor is repeated, and he doesn't. When at that time they signed the contracts to do the programme they didn't get a repeat fee mainly because in those days gameshows were never repeated, and that nobody expected a channel like Challenge TV to launch either.