Why no quizzes on RTE?

efb

All National Lottery games have to be games of chance by law

brian_t

Baldy Conscience wrote: »

Blackboard Jungle! I was on it, school captain and all.

Challenging Times, the University Challenge rip off was also decent.

Dodge the Question with Jonathan Philbin Bowman was also one that I enjoyed.

I'm not sure that there is a market for such quizzes on Irish television regardless of who presents.

AnonoBoy

TV3 show a lot of them don't they?

brian_t

AnonoBoy wrote: »

TV3 show a lot of them don't they?

Are they not mostly Game Shows.

AnonoBoy

brian_t wrote: »

Are they not mostly Game Shows.

Tipping Point and The Chaser are both quizzes - I think they're on TV3.

Go Harvey Go

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Tipping Point and The Chaser are both quizzes - I think they're on TV3.

They're not Irish quizzes, though.

I'm surprised that not more people remember It's Not The Answer - it ran for four series in the early 2000s, was dubbed "TV's Toughest Game Show" (and justifiably so, in fact), and even found its way to Britain:

http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/It%27s_Not_the_Answer

Harry Angstrom

Go Harvey Go wrote: »

They're not Irish quizzes, though.

I'm surprised that not more people remember It's Not The Answer - it ran for four series in the early 2000s, was dubbed "TV's Toughest Game Show" (and justifiably so, in fact), and even found its way to Britain:

http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/It%27s_Not_the_Answer

I was trying to remember the name of that one! As far as I can remember it was shown on weeknights at 6.30 when the RTE news is cut back to half an hour (cos we all know that news doesn't happen during the summer )

Go Harvey Go

Harry Angstrom wrote: »

I was trying to remember the name of that one! As far as I can remember it was shown on weeknights at 6.30 when the RTE news is cut back to half an hour (cos we all know that news doesn't happen during the summer )

Indeed - a slot that these days is more or less permanently occupied by repeats of Reeling In The Years.

And whatever became of its host, Bryan Smyth? Well, here's his LinkedIn profile:

http://ie.linkedin.com/in/bryansmyth

brian_t

AnonoBoy wrote: »

Tipping Point and The Chaser are both quizzes - I think they're on TV3.

I think Tipping Point is generally referred to as a Game Show.

In my opinion 30 minutes is about the right length for a quiz.

When they are stretched out to an hour long then I would consider them a Game show.

AnonoBoy

brian_t wrote: »

I think Tipping Point is generally referred to as a Game Show.

In my opinion 30 minutes is about the right length for a quiz.

When they are stretched out to an hour long then I would consider them a Game show.

I don't really make the distinction. When there's questions being asked - it's a quiz in my mind!

Go Harvey Go

brian_t wrote: »

I think Tipping Point is generally referred to as a Game Show.

In my opinion 30 minutes is about the right length for a quiz.

When they are stretched out to an hour long then I would consider them a Game show.

I myself consider Tipping Point a game show - but not because it's 60 minutes long rather than 30.

No, I consider TP a game show because, at the end of the day, it's really a game of chance.

There are plenty of questions in it, of course - but there's no controlling the counters won for answering these questions correctly. They could fall into the machine quickly or slowly, they could land flat or ride on other counters, and a whole load of them could go over the tipping point at once or they could hang there.

Sure enough, there have been contestants who have got about fifteen questions right but have had little or no luck with their counters - and there have been contestants who have won the £10k jackpot having only got about eight questions right...

30 minutes is the right length of time for many quizzes - most notably Mastermind, University Challenge, Only Connect and the original Fifteen to One - but that really doesn't mean that every quiz has to be 30 minutes long. Nor does it mean that anything longer than 30 minutes has to be considered a game show instead.

The Chase certainly works well at 60 minutes long, as does Pointless at 45 (and before that the Weakest Link). Many early episodes of WWTBAM were 30 minutes long, but it probably worked better at 60.

And Countdown may not be quite as good at 45 minutes long as it was as 30, but it's certainly not a disaster either. It helps that the extra 15 minutes are filled with more letters and numbers games, rather than meaningless chat.

(Yes, there are no questions on Countdown, and there never have been any - but Richard Whiteley often said it was a quiz, and that's fine with me.)

Go Harvey Go

Anyway, back on topic.

Not one but two quizzes found their way onto RTE1's Sunday evening schedules in the mid-2000s - Delegation and Last One Standing.

Delegation, made by Adare Productions and hosted by Tom Ó Brannagáin, featured three teams, each consisting of a captain and four of his/her friends, workmates or family members. And when a team was asked a question, the captain had to "delegate" the answering of that question to one of his/her team-mates.

The best-scoring team went through to the end game, in which the roles were basically reversed as the captain had to do the answering in order to win prizes for his/her team-mates and for himself/herself. Naturally, there was an all-or-nothing gamble at the end.

Tom was a capable host, even if his catchphrase "Delegate well" was destined to be remembered by just about no-one, and even if he raised his voice quite a lot: "At the end of that round, you have scored... TWO POINTS!"

At least two series were made, and it did well enough to warrant a celeb episode (inevitably featuring a team of Fair City stars and a team of GAA legends). After it ended, Tom resorted to being the "evil" judge on almost all of TG4's talent shows.

Last One Standing, meanwhile, was made by Mind The Gap Films and hosted by Jon Slattery - who always looked like he'd had a pint or two before recording.

In it, four contestants answered multiple-choice questions in rounds of 100 seconds. When a contestant was being asked a question, they were deemed to be in control - which they kept if they got the question right, or passed over to the next contestant if they got it wrong.

Points were given for right answers, but the aim wasn't to obtain the highest score - it was to be in control when the 100 seconds expired. If you were, you were "still standing" and hence through to the next stage of the contest. Thus, it was possible to obtain a huge score and still lose, simply because you weren't in control when the time was up...

The last two contestants went through to an end game that was played in much the same way as before, except that there were 200 seconds on the clock. And the contestants sat on some sort of turntable, for whatever reason. Anyway, whoever was in control when the time expired was the "Last One Standing", and won a holiday - determined by combining their score with that of their defeated opponent. Again, it was possible for that opponent to have the higher score...

With all due respect to Jon, it's probably fair to say that he wasn't quite as capable a game show host as Tom was - even if he didn't look like he had a few jars on board. That said, I still consider it a shame that Last One Standing lasted just one series.

Ralf and Florian

AnonoBoy wrote: »

I don't really make the distinction. When there's questions being asked - it's a quiz in my mind!

If the questions are general knowledge.If the questions are along the lines of "whats your partners favourite 80s lovesong?" then its a gameshow.