Quiz TV closes down

Oh dear, Big Game TV were raided by the fraud squad today for alleged deception of viewers.

Big Game TV are based at Grays Inn Road, home of ITN / ITV Network Centre. They use the former Five News studios. They produce the Hallmark Quiz, ITV's The Daily Quiz and Big Game TV channel.

This report makes for interesting listening, with the single operator alledgedly being told to ignore calls, sometimes up to 45 minutes !!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/items/01/2006_20_fri.shtml

Of course Big Game TV strenuously deny any wrong doing. Very interesting and surely a big concern for ITV Play.

Hopefully this will start the downfall of all the quiz channel cons.

Edit: Listening to these clips, it explains why the presenters of these channels are staring gormlessly into the camera for hours on end, with no callers. Hopefully, this event will lead to new rules being drawn up which will lead to these channels being shut down.

I heard something about this on the radio whilst with my dog in the kitchen but all I caught was ... "..(something like fire) at television studio Big Game TV..". Ah well.

It's the beginning of the end for quiz channels, hopefully. Remember when Quiz TV launched in 2004, and how novel an idea it was? Then 9 Live arrived at the end of the year, then from 2005 to now all hell's broken loose.

Both ITV1 and Five are now doing a quiz thing at night. It seems this happened just at the right time.

Five are now simulcasting The Great Big British Quiz, one of the worst of its genre.

By the way, Leah Charles off of CITV is one of the presenters on Big Game TV

This doesn't surprise me one bit - in fact, it's about time these quiz channels were placed under investigation.

I remember reading The Great Big British Quiz ran a puzzle (that rolled over because anyone who got through failed to give the right answer)...it was a "fill in the word" type puzzle, where four words placed on top of each other each had a missing letter/gap, and each of the 'gaps' from top to bottom would make a new word, which you had to find.

No one ever got the answer. When it was revealed, the solution was some obscure word I had never heard of - in fact, it wasn't even in the English Dictionary. Surely that is unacceptable.

The games are always won on The Great Big British Quiz. They either just play them until someone gets the answer or start giving clues or narrowing down the answer in other ways.



The English Dictionary? Which one? Why should their word be in your dictionary of choice? Were you really surprised that the answer worth £50,000 was an obscure word? They make the games, they make the rules and if you don't like it then simply don't play.

I don't know why people instantly think every quiz channel is a con. Why do they need to be? The Great Big British Quiz run the same puzzle for days on end and get (and take) plenty of callers without paying out much money in prizes. They must be raking in the money, why would they risk that by doing anything illegal or even dodgy?

For the record, I don't play The Great Big British Quiz. I once won £100 (I think) when they started but the odds of winning are now too high for me. Same reason I don't play the lottery. My choice though.

I was always suspicious. I started off with these play along quizzes with a show on Men and Motors (never rang one though) and then found more and more. Then I thought why the hell people aren't ringing in when an answer is so spectacularly obvious. Makes me even more suspicious why some games like on Quiz Call and The Mint where they will have a "Name A..." game, and they think of the least-obvious ones to make it even harder, and wastes other peoples money!

One question - was Big Game TV raided whilst on air, and was transmission distrupted?

Oh, yes. That's the one I saw where the presenter was staring gormlessly into the camera for at least 2 minutes without saying a word. Presumably to gather callers who are never going to get through.

This is fraud, plain and simple (like the great British public).

If Greg Scott is reading, I implore him to comment on Quizmania's practices.



How the mighty have fallen! Sadly not an isolated case; You Bet! hostess Ellis Ward is now reduced to appearing on a shopping channel.

Being a presenter on there must be so boring. It basically goes something like

Add all the numbers, go on, add the numbers, ring (reads phone number), £500 up for grabs
(dog barks)
Oh we've got a caller, what's your name, where are you from, what's your answer? let's see if you are right.........?
------ Try Again ------>
Sorry that was't right, never mind, try again, add the numbers, (reads phone number)... etc etc, repeat until end of shift!

To be honest, Quizmania is at least missing many of the "con" elements of most of these channels. I can't comment on how easy it is to get through though, as I've never tried. At least they seem to take callers fairly frequently, compared to these others where can be gaps of several minutes between callers. And at least QM is entertaining to watch, and isn't some 20-something blond staring gormlessly and pointing for hours on end like most channels.