Sky's Branding

I love the fact that they show 'FILLER' for ten minutes at 21:30 every day.

The font used in the nav bar is from the c.2003 scheme, the Favicon and tabs (at the top of the gambling pages) are in the c.2005 scheme and there's evidence of the c.2007 logo on the Games pages (amongst others).

In short, it's an outdated mess! The forum is running on a seriously outdated version of vBulletin too.


Haha! I think they've got the timings a bit off. "Aunty's Bloomers" is usually shown following 1 vs. 100 and In It to Win It to make the 50 minute programme fill an hour.

Also, look at the top of the browser - it says Challenge TV - a legacy from the 1997 scheme!

The website description (which appears in search engine results) is also a bit out of date:

"Quiz and game shows channel. Includes shows and games information plus chat area. Available on Sky, Telewest and NTL."


That's nothing unusual. On the Living website it says "Living TV", and it's the same with several of the UKTV channels, and I'm sure there's other examples out there. "TV" is there to show that it's a website for a TV channel, and isn't necessarily part of the channel's name.

Also showing Bullseye as HD at http://data.skyprogrammeinformation.co.uk/wtv.php?week=388&chan=SCHL

Hmm. Even if it's the Bullseye remake I'm not even sure it was filmed in HD to start with?

I don't think they have even shown Bullseye in 16:9 yet, let alone HD.

Where would the broadcast it anyway? There's no Challenge nor any prospect of one, and for good reason; most of their stuff is from the 90s.

Just thinking though, how awesome would The Crystal Maze have been in HD? (Obviously not the existing stuff; the set would probably just look crap but you get my drift.)

The remakes that Granada did weren't filmed in HD - the studios weren't HD-ready at the time.

I guess whether Challenge becomes Sky Challenge will tell us a lot about the future of the channel and whether Sky are interested in re-inventing it and then keeping it on Freeview - or are just putting it on Freeview until they work out what to do with the slot (or sell it, don't renew contract) and then axe it altogether.

A bit of catch 22 for Sky really - not that Challenge will be a massive asset to Freeview, especially once the novelty wares off, but at least in keeping it on Freeview Sky prevent another channel from launching.

Challenge could be made into an asset, the problem is they are repeating the same programmes over and over again, a few years ago it was showing some decent programmes, you just have to look on Youtube.

Don't forget In It To Win It was originally a lottery programme -- thus by cutting out the various amounts of time used prevaricating around pushing a button to choose some numbers, you could have anything between 45 and 55 minute length programmes.

I'm sure the adverts on Challenge more than make up for the lottery draws when shown on the BBC. I haven't seen much of In It To Win It on Challenge because I wasn't a fan of it originally but if it is like most recent accusations than it is likely to be butchered almost to death and will actually be shorter than the BBC version (once the commercial messages are removed from both versions).

BTW, one of the episodes of Catchphrase on Challenge today was the Snake Charmer one. Always nice to see.