Archive: ITV Play

I’ve taken the piss out of the late-night television programmes for losers with not enough sex, ITV Playdate and SmileTV / Party People on this blog. For more on these nocturnal televisual travesties, read phucker’s take on: ITV Playdate; Party People.

Because I tend to stay up late and, frankly, I am a loser with not enough sex, I sometimes flick past these programmes, as terrible as they are. I’m starting to wonder if they are not elaborate projects devised by twisted comedy genii.

Last night’s edition of Playdate had a classic participant last night. She was 29 years old and her profile boasted that she has an 18 year old child! That exclamation mark isn’t mine — her profile actually said, “She has an 18 year old child!” as if it was bloody brilliant. But if, like me, you have done your maths you will have worked out that she was eleven years old when she gave birth. Attractive! How do I get in touch?!

Judging by her behaviour on the programme, her courting skills probably haven’t improved since she was 11. Her legs were permanently wide open. One of the other participants noted, “I think I’ve seen her crotch more often than I’ve seen mine.” The presenter had to literally force her legs shut!

Part of the Playdate format is that the participants will often have a bit of a chat with the presenter so that you get to know a bit about them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an awful lot to know about the open-legged participant.

“What do you like doing?”, asked the presenter.
“I dunno… I like havin’ sex,” she replied, suggestively sucking her third Chuppa Chup.
“Okay, so what kind of guy are you looking for?”, the presenter pressed.
“Dunno… Actually, I like the look of Lee over there.” She pointed at one of the other participants, who was probably shitting about half his weight with fear. This relationship was never going to be helped by the fact that Lee is “looking for a man tonight.” (Was that the truth or just quick thinking?)
But that didn’t deter our pre-teen pregnancy champion. “Come over ’ere an’ play with mah fanny.”

That’s not the way to charm a man. It’s no wonder she is resorting to going on television to advertise her undoubtedly flappy flange. That chat-up line probably hasn’t worked with anybody above the age of about 15. Unsurprisingly, her microphone was turned off after that incident. Remarkably, she wasn’t hauled off air completely.

That wasn’t embarrassing enough though, so I switched over to Party People. The format is more straightforward: weirdos send their texts in as council estate munters witter on while trying to show a bit of shoulder. It’s a world where the producers and right-hand men of the programme are all called Partyboy. A typical text is: “Partyboy tickle her feet for AT LEAST TEN SECONDS.”

Not tonight. That simply isn’t weird enough. One text read: “Do either of you ladies need a poo?” He should have visited this blog instead.

Another text said, “My boyfriend wants to watch me go to the toilet but I’m worried that I’ll fart. What should I do?” To which the presenter said, “You can tell that text is from a bloke can’t you?”

ITV’s latest late-night money-making programme is such a massive pile of arse powder that it has to be seen to be believed. I think they are sensing that the tide is turning against quiz television. The regulators will have caught up soon enough. So now they have set up a dating service called ITV Playdate.

Somehow, ITV manage to find up to a dozen people who are shameless enough to sit in a studio with laptops connecting them up to anybody who wants to phone or text them up. For £1 per go, naturally.

As you would expect on a dating show, the participants probably haven’t scored in an age and are fairly desperate. I guess you would have to be prepared to appear on national television basically saying, “I can’t get a partner any other way than by advertising this very fact on television.”

Most of them are your typical socially awkward types. Some of them are just all-out dickwads though. One ‘DJ’ who appeared on the programme seemed to genuinely think he was Goldie. He had more chains than he had teeth. He actually used ‘Bo!’ as a greeting without a hint of irony.

These people obviously never get any callers. They often cite “technical problems”. Yeah right. Something tells me the socially awkward one who’s hiding behind his hair has no problems working his computer at home.

And then sitting centre stage is the attractive young woman who has received twenty calls in the past hour. Some of the callers have gone “a bit too far” apparently. Yuk! ITV, do you see what you have done?!

This might not be at the level of Party People or the various other babestation channels which basically consist of dirty men asking for extreme closeups of the girls’ feet. But at least those channels don’t pretend otherwise. ITV Playdate acts as though it’s a classy programme, but it is not.

Now phucker has alerted us to the contents of the ITV Playdate website. And this is where the last remaining vestiges of good taste are thrown out of the top floor window, kicked around, stamped on, shat on and something elsed on that I really don’t want to say!

Presenter Brendan Courtney is aged “22 (and a bit … and the bit is my own business)”. That’s a joke already. The bit looks as though it’s at least twenty. But just wait until you see what he lists as his favourite scent.

Favourite scent: Old Spice, Bukkake.

What the fuck?! Bukkake?!? Does he even know what it is? Which wise guy at ITV thought that it would be okay to put this on the website? Aaargh!

I’ve heard this on Radio Five Live’s bulletins at 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock, but strangely I haven’t found any mention of this on the internet at all.

The offices of Big Game TV have been raided. Apparently it is alleged that at certain times callers had no chance of getting through. I am shocked.

I am surprised, though, that Big Game TV is the first one to be investigated. On-screen it doesn’t seem like one of the scammiest channels — just one of the most boring.

ITV Play logo Most might not bat an eyelid if a small Sky channel is investigated, but what could be interesting about this is that ITV have their fingers in the Big Game TV pie. When ITV first started experimenting with participation TV on ITV3 and ITV2 it was simulcasting Big Game TV. Now Big Game TV makes The Daily Quiz, which is broadcast on Men & Motors and ITV Play.

Quiz channels, or ‘participation TV’ as the broadcasters prefer to call it, are a little bit of a hobby horse of this blog. The channels like to set impossible puzzles and they never explain the solutions. Essentially this turns the whole process into a lottery, as callers end up guessing a random number. Callers pay 60p or £1 per entry, and every so often somebody wins £50 or something.

ITV Play’s participation TV programming is said to make £2m per month. Goodness knows how much the others must be making then, because ITV’s programmes usually seem the most respectable of all of them (although I have noticed while flicking through that The Mint is beginning to set those ridiculous ‘add the numbers’ games).

Here is an interesting discussion about Grab a Grand, a programme on Sky digital which recently set up a channel, SmileTV, on Freeview. According to the DS forummers, Grab a Grand staff members are blatantly phoning up their own channel with wrong answers. And there is Who needs shopping channels? on this blog, which had some interesting comments before it got swamped by idiots who wanted to sling mud around…

If anything happens as a result of the raid, you can bet that quiz channels will find a way round it. When AuctionWorld was closed a couple of years ago for displaying grossly inflated ‘guide prices’, the other shopping channels merely replaced their ‘guide prices’ with ‘start prices’.

Update: Finally, I can bring you a link. But it’s of a radio programme! Come on internet, you’re meant to be the future! (Via TV Forum.)

Update (20/05/2006): The Daily Quiz has been replaced by This Morning Puzzle Book on ITV Play today (This Morning at 6pm!).

Also, according to Sascha on this thread, The Mint makes £100,000 per night!

Update (21/05/2006): Sascha at TV Forum again:

The overnight quiz game on The Hits, Smash Hits etc. music channels, is actually broadcast from a scruffy building in Budapest, Hungary. It’s beamed into the UK via a very dubious company which also makes pornographic videos for the eastern European market.

If that’s true it is very strange. I always thought that those programmes looked particularly weird…

ITV Play slinky ident
ITV Play barker
Images nicked off Andrew Wood at TV Forum
Another ‘Participation TV’ channel (i.e. scheming, conning, shite shite quiz channel) launches this week. ITV Play is replacing Men & Motors on Freeview. All I can say is:

  1. at least Men & Motors isn’t much of a loss
  2. at least it will have Quizmania on it
  3. at least it has really pretty idents!

People who have read this blog for a long time may know that I am interested in all of this television presentation nonsense. When I was a wee nipper, I found ITV regions fascinating. I just did, don’t ask me why. It was probably just the shiny logos.

It wasn’t only television logos either. Apparently my first word was ‘gas’. According to my parents I often pointed at the logo on the gas van and shouted ‘GAS’. I guess it’s one way to learn how to read.

If a station relaunched with a new set of idents, I’d usually end up watching the channel all day just to take it in. Sad or what? Imagine my delight when I discovered a few years ago, through the wonder of the internet, that I wasn’t the only one.

Anyway, when I was younger, some idents really scared the crap out of me. I remember a particular Channel 4 ident that was used to introduce its American Football programmes. It always made me jump because the ’4′ figure made a loud grunt. Numbers don’t grunt! I can remember actually having nightmares about it.

ITV Schools ident But the scariest ident of them all was surely the rotating ITV Schools one. I’m not too sure why I was so frightened by it, but it seriously gave me the willies. I remember once actually running through to tell my mum when I managed to sit through it!

Maybe I was worried that the rather hefty-looking ITV logos would spin off course and hit me. Perhaps I couldn’t comprehend the advanced computer graphics. Everybody knows that CGI dates horribly. But despite the fact that the ITV Schools ident is almost twenty years old, I think they still look amazingly good even judging by today’s standards.

There is an excellent feature on TV ARK all about the making of this ident. It sounds like it was a truly massive task. It’s amazing to think that they would go to so much bother just to create a way to introduce some television programmes!

When I was six, the spinning ITV Schools ident and ITV Schools itself was gone forever. So I wouldn’t have to be scared by the evil ident, right? Well imagine my shock when (at the tender age of six, remember) the brand new Channel 4 Schools ident ended up being this freaky thing. The spooky countdown music (which I now actually think is pretty cool) sounded like an accompaniment to a drowning. This is music for introducing schools programmes! Did they not realise that children would be watching?!