Saturday Night continuity

I must admit to not usually watching much TV on a Saturday evening, so this has probably been happening for a while.

I was at a friend's on Sat and she really wanted to watch Fame Academy. At the end Patrick handed straight over to Philip Schofield for Winning Lines with no ident/continuity.

A little later we switched over to BBC3, where there didn't seem to be any continuity between the various FA progs.

Does this happen every week and, if so, is it only round the FA progs?

Come to think of it, this must make Saturday evening one of the few trailer-free areas of the Beeb.

I believe that this was mentioned a couple of weeks back when FA began. Evidently they're hoping that direct links in and out will persuade more people to watch. Only possible because they're both live, I would assume.

I believe that Winning Lines (and, indeed all gameshow formats of the lottery programme) is pre-recorded - on Thursdays I think - including the verbal links into the various lotto draws. The live draws are inserted as the programme is played out on the Saturday night. On Saturdays, Philip has to make sure he has the same suit/haircut as on Thursday, for continuity.

You've opened up a far more interesting subject than it, at first, appears, Neil.

The Beeb started this direct handover lark on Saturday evenings the week that Pop Idol began, and it was speculated, correctly in my opinion, that they're doing it to stop viewers defecting to Pop Idol in the long(ish) gaps that normally occur between Beeb programmes.

Which begs the question that if they ACCEPT the theory that viewers will defect during a long stream of trailers, then why do they continue the trailer policy during the whole of the rest of the week?

You'd think that if they can take special action to avoid the problem on Saturday evenings, they'd take that same action the rest of the time, and keep more viewers more often.

It's clear that the powers-that-be understand the problem as there have been numerous previous direct handovers on odd occasions, like when Coronation Street has a special plot line, for instance.

It appears, on the surface, to be another case of two-faced middle management in the scheduling department, but I really don't know the real cause of one policy for Saturday evenings and another for the rest of the week.

Anyone got any theories?

Not quite. The NATIONAL LOTTERY JET SET is almost all live. With WINNING LINES, the recorded bits are done earlier in the day, and the end of the programme where Philip speaks to a caller is live, as well as the draws of course.

Aah.

I'm sure I remember that for The National Lottery Big Ticket (which I think was the first gameshow format for the lottery : ) there were trailers promoting the forthcoming edition, featuring that forthcoming editions celebrities, shown from a couple of days before Saturday. Hence my guess of Thursday pre-recording.

I was assuming (but not any more) that such a practice continued to this day (assuming that I was ever right in the first place! )

Almost - it was recorded while the previous week's recording was being transmitted from another part of the gallery, so Anthea had to keep getting changed back into the previous week's clothes for the live draws.

I know that the direct hand over is something that has been tried out for the lunchtime and afternoon news, but it was only tried three or four times before reverting to the old heads titles approach.

It will be interesting to see whether steps are taken to get rid of idents in the near future!