Red or Black?

Something like Eggheads, or to a greater degree In It to Win It.

But I don't really think over promotion can kill a show, being **** can kill a show.

Well it's certainly done nothing for Ant & Dec's popularity.

Not sure I entirely agree. I think that the Nicky and Julia office based format was becoming stale. Annie was an iconic Watchdog presenter from it's earlier days, and re-introducing her to the format, and merging it with Rogue Traders has given it a bit more light and shade, and it feels a much more confident show.

The Nicky and Julia format could be a bit dour at times, and although the show has to tackle serious subjects, you also need people to watch, and a bit of humour works well.

I agree with all of the above Noggin.

The People Versus syndrome.

I think if a show's gonna succeed it'll succeed anyway, if Red or Black had no publicity it would have still flopped.

I can't understand why Penn and Teller: Fool Us, didn't do better as I think it's one of the best shows of the last couple of years certainly, when terrible BBC magic show The Magicians was pulling in 5 million earlier in the year.

Crap shows will always die no matter what the promotion. But over-hype will kill bad and good shows. It's all a case of how it meets the audiences expectations.

If the audience is told that the programme is going to be the best thing they've ever seen then they're bound to be disappointed because it probably won't live up to that. It makes them feel worse than they actually are

Because they put it out in the summer, fewer people watch TV in the summer.

It's coming back for another series apparently, which is good as I thought it was great... although they did themselves no favours by scheduling the last episode ages after the one everyone though was the last episode and put it on a different night. I almost missed it

Ant & Dec have peaked. They used to be able to save a poor show but now they're just part of them problem - their act has become tiring and irritating.

Really? The old show did have humorous elements if you watched it. The format wasn't becoming stale because they relaunched in a brand new studio that was only used for one series! What a waste! My friends and family always did tune in every week, although the BBC didn't promote it as much and so sometimes I would miss the first episode of the new series.

Anne Robinson might have been an inconic presenter, but she had already had her time and I don't think it's ever right to go back to the past just because you think something is better. That's like saying I'm going to bring back the BBC2 1991 idents, because they were the best. You should be going forwards, not backwards, no matter if you think it was better in the past.

I admired both Watchdog and Rogue Traders - Watchdog was more serious, and Rogue Traders had a more lighthearted feel yet at the same time exposing rogues.

I really don't understand why anyone would prefer the new tacky and cheap version of Watchdog over the old, more authorative, tried and tested version of Watchdog.

Having watched last night's show for the first time what I saw wasn't too bad... ...however that was largely due to watching via catch-up and using the fast forward button.

The programme feels very padded out, the 1hr 15min & 30min shows could very easily be merged into at most a single 1hr 30min programme. The qualifying heats seemed to drag and would have been better without the 'vox pops' with contestants/potential finalists. Also the long (filmed) introduction of the finalists was completely pointless, apart from presumably padding the show out enough for another ad break. I think it could have instead been done during Ant & Dec's chat with each contestant whilst they made their first live red or black choice.

I agree re: Penn and Teller, though I did say after the pilot I think it would work better as occassional specials rather than in a series format. It didn't help it being sandwiched between Odd One In and The Marriage Ref, but then again it still lost viewers week on week itself so you can't just blame scheduling. It is frustrating though when it was a far superior effort to the BBC's Magicians but ended up with half the number of viewers. Fool Us unashamedly celebrated the magic of magic - for the BBC The Magicians was just yet another celebrity vehicle and they had little respect for the talent of the magicians themselves.