Long term readers of this blog will know that I am not a big fan of phone-in quizzes. So when the recent controversy surrounding premium rate phone lines I was quite pleased. But now I think it has turned into media bandwagon.

More and more instances of dodgy goings-on are being sniffed out by the media. The problem is, each subsequent new problem is less important than the last one. Now the premium rate phone lines look a bit amateurish — but not evil, which is what they actually are.

Not that I have any sympathy for the viewers who phone in time after time and somehow expect not to be charged. Take the fuss surrounding Channel Five’s Brainteaser. There were a few instances where the producers were unable to find anybody who had a correct answer among the ten random names and numbers supplied by the people in charge of the phone lines.

If you have ever watched Brainteaser, you will know just how cretinous you have to be to get the answer wrong. The most common puzzles on Brainteaser are are a bit like anagrams, but instead of all the letters being jumbled up, groups of letters are jumbled up. A typical example (stolen from here) is “LL WA PER PA”.

Not too difficult is it? To be honest, I don’t blame the producers for not having a contingency plan in case they can’t find somebody out of a list of ten people who can’t get the correct answer. It might have been misguided for them to make up fake names of non-winners, but this smacks more of panicking producers on a live TV show who don’t know what to do rather than the pure evil that can be found on other quiz channels.

Then there is the hoo-ha over The X Factor, where viewers were charged a bank-breaking 15 pence. I mean, most people probably drop that amount of money every day without realising it. And if you can’t spare that extra 15 pence, what on earth are you doing using premium rate phone-in lines where your chances of affecting the result are approximately zero?

Channel 4’s The Morning Line got in trouble for charging callers who were stupid enough to phone up after it was announced that the lines were closed. If the phrase “phone lines are now closed” isn’t enough to stop you phoning in, then you really have nothing to complain about.

And now we have got to the point where children are being dragged into the whole thing. A Blue Peter phone-in competition where proceeds went to charity fell victim to a technical glitch. Much like the Brainteaser instance, a panicking member of the production put a child who happened to be visiting the studio on the air to pose as a competition entrant.

Note the final couple of paragraphs in the story:

But Ms Zahoor, whose information led to the discovery, says she thinks the BBC’s reaction is “silly”.

“I didn’t realise that it would be blown out of all proportion,” she said, adding that she had refused to lodge a formal complaint about the show.

Again, it was probably misguided, but it is hardly the deception and near fraud that you find on some channels. I can’t actually imagine how lame the next “premium rate phone call revelation” is going to be. 999 lines open instead of the 1,000 promised? Comic Relief is going to be fun this year!

What really gets me the most about this storm is the fact that the very worst examples of the genre are getting away with it. The media is after the big names like Britain’s finest comedy duo Richard and Judy, Saturday Kitchen, The X Factor and Blue Peter.

But the quiz channels themselves — entire channels that are devoted to these controversial competitions — are carrying on pretty much as normal. There was a slightly eerie evening recently when there was only one of these on Freeview — Big Game TV on Ftn (how different would it be if this channel were called ‘Virgin’, its true colours?). But TMF’s Pop the Q was only gone for one evening due to a technical problem.

Channel Five dropped Quiz Call in the wake of the Brainteaser problems, but Quiz Call itself carries on as normal on Sky. The ITV Play channel has been axed by ITV, but only because it wasn’t making enough money!

These might be signs that the phone-in quiz television genre has hit the rocks. But the genre’s coat has been on a shoogly nail for ages. You can tell that with all the chopping and changing that has been going on, such as when Channel 4 sold Quiz Call (I bet they’re mighty glad they sold it now!) and the musical chairs involving Ftn’s, Channel Five’s and even ITV’s quiz slots.

ITV Play only makes money on its late-night ITV1 slot and apparently often made a loss during the day. The channel probably would have closed anyway — it’s just that now was a convenient time to close it.

With this controversy, programmes like the relatively innocuous Richard & Judy are being castigated, while the actually evil Make Your Play has technically been given the all-clear.

I mean, at least the competitions on Richard & Judy and the like have well-defined rules and everybody gets pretty much what is expected. On the quiz channels, on the other hand, callers are taken arbitrarily (even during ’speed rounds’, even when the presenters are promising that they are taking “as many calls as they can”).

The questions are vaguely-defined such as the tower guessing games (where is the skill in that?, as a couple of Resonance FM presenters might say) or the downright deceitful ‘add the numbers / pennies / circles / whatever’ games. And they never tell you how they get to the answers. These are the real premium rate scams, but somehow everybody is now focussing on charity-funding competitions for children.

Finally, a big thumbs down goes to Icstis, the so-called regulatory body for premium rate phone lines. That is has taken this media bandwagon to finally get Icstis to levitate their big arse over problems that are in some cases several months old is shocking. The shouldn’t have to wait for the media to do their job for them.

Notably, The Hits has ditched its frankly diabolical Cash Call slot. Apparently this programme was actually beamed from Hungary (and the programme was often fronted by presenters whose grip of English wasn’t too great). Quite fishy.

Anyway, enjoy this clip of it on YouTube. As you can see, it is deceptively boring — a good cure for insomnia at that time of night perhaps? On the other hand, it is classic car-crash television, and it is fascinating just for how boring it is.

Update: Qwghlm Twitters his view:

ZOMG Blue Peter cheatery! Meanwhile, the Trident bill is going through the House…

Yesterday Ofcom criticised the BBC’s hugely promising project to get its content online and accessible on demand for free. According to Ofcom, project like BBC iPlayer “would not be in the long-term public interest”. Not too long ago a similar attack was made against the BBC’s use of podcasts.

This is the BBC using modern technology to make content more available to everybody. These are programmes that have already been paid for, being made available to more people in a much more convenient format. You would be able to watch or listen to programmes whenever it suits you. Unquestionably, license fee payers would be getting more value for money.

But apparently, the BBC doing great things like this hurts the commercial sector. I think not! Does the BBC’s iPlayer prevent ITV from creating their own similar service? Hardly. In fact, Channel 4 are already out of the blocks with their 4oD service.

The fact that more commercial broadcasters haven’t taken the same step, though, is rather telling. The problem with commercial broadcasters is that they all just roll around moaning about the license fee instead of actually thinking about what the audience wants. As the boss of (commerical) Radio Pembrokeshire said last year,

…If only other small commercial stations would stop whining about the [BBC] and offer engaging content, like us, then the commercial sector would be in less of a sorry state.

The commercial broadcasters churn out their samey middle-of-the-road rubbish and refuse to take advantage of the new technology that threatens the very existence of television as we know it. The BBC, meanwhile, is taking all of the innovative steps that are dragging the mainstream media into the 21^st century.

If the commercial sector is in trouble, they ought to take a good look at themselves rather than just pointing at the BBC. As things stand, the greatest argument in favour of the license fee is not the quality of the BBC. It is the shoddy state of commercial broadcasters, with their utter disregard for viewers.

Meanwhile, Ofcom should be embarrassed. To criticise the BBC’s ambitions to drag television into the modern world and benefit viewers as a whole makes them just look completely out of touch, particularly as they claim that such a scheme would not be in the public interest!

All the while, Ofcom turn a blind eye to — if not positively encourage — phone-in quiz shows that pollute commercial television stations. These are genuine dangers to the public interest. They don’t serve the viewers one iota (apart from the relatively decent Quizmania, which has been axed), and they downright swindle the poor people who phone in.

See also Ryan Morrison’s post. Meanwhile, Mike Power puts it more succinctly.

My views on quiz channels are fairly well documented on this blog. But among the shameless scammers and gormless presenters there was one clear ‘least worst’ phone-in quiz programme — Quizmania. And it’s been axed. The final programme is on tomorrow at 10pm.

What does it say that the one quiz programme that seemed to care a little bit about its viewers and paying contestants is the one that had to be dumped by ITV? Most quiz channels part viewers with their cash by setting puzzles that look easy, but are actually extremely difficult. Difficult because they never tell you the method of getting the answer.

Add the numbers is a notorious example. It is said that producers sometimes decide to count hidden Roman numerals in a piece of text as numbers! Count the pennies is another one. You really might as well just pick a random number, which is what many callers undoubtedly do. Ofcom regulations say that games must involve skill and not luck. Luck would make it a lottery and the quiz channel would have to give much of its taking to charity. Quizmania was different. It never got any worse than the relatively innocuous “tower” games.

But that wasn’t the reason I liked Quizmania. The reason was that Quizmania was genuinely entertaining. Due to the nature of the genre, quiz television is probably the closest television comes to the style of presenting more common on radio. By necessity, you get to know a presenter’s on-screen persona pretty well. This helps if a presenter actually has a personality.

Most quiz channels are fronted by totally gormless presenters who have nothing to say. It is more like World Championship Stare-Out than a phone-in quiz.

Quizmania, on the other hand, has the amazing Greg Scott (warning: link contains music that automatically plays!). What a guy. Scary inside-out knowledge of gameshows. Here is ten minutes of him in action:

Part of what made Quizmania amazing was the way the crew got involved as well. Other programmes may try to involve the crew, but they will never do it as well as Quizmania has done it. Flash is incredible! Who knew that a camera operator could be so entertaining?!

When the rockstar in waiting was allegedly banned from appearing on camera he got around the ban by holding cardboard cutouts and doing hilarious impressions of Morgan Freeman (”I played God!”) and Paul McCartney. Flash ought to have his own programme really.

This week probably hasn’t been a pleasant one for the Quizmania crew, as one by one the regular presenters have done their last shows. It is clear that everybody involved in the show genuinely loved working on Quizmania. Poor Lee Baldry was in tears.

Meanwhile, Make Your Play, which is what has replaced Quizmania on ITV1, is an utterly characterless programme. It reminds you that at its heart, quiz television is all about making money from callers; not keeping viewers entertained. Quizmania was a gem because it did both — and it wasn’t as deceitful at parting viewers with cash as many other quiz programmes are.

Don’t forget that Quizmania is the programme that was so successful for ITV1 that it led to the launch of ITV Play. It feels like an injustice. There will be many who think that Quizmania should not be forgiven for being part of the phone-in quiz disease that’s ruined late-night television over the past couple of years. But I think it should be applauded for making an otherwise dire format fun.

• Quizmania 2005-2007 thread on TV Forum

Luckily, many of Quizmania’s best moments have been immortalised on YouTube forever, and I present a mini Quizmania YouTube extravaganza below the fold. Unfortunately, many of my favourite moments of the past year and a bit aren’t on YouTube, but I’ve done the best I can.

Click for more »

I wonder if one of the great promises of digital television will not be kept in the long run. Theoretically, Freeview offers viewers more choice than the old five analogue channels. At first it was true. As well as the five channels we already knew, ONdigital launched with plenty of sport and film channels, childrens’ channels and a variety of other niche channels.

That’s still kind of the same with Freeview today. But Freeview is becoming a victim of its own success. There are dozens of channels on Freeview. But once you take away the shopping and quiz channels, many of the remaining channels spend much of their time broadcasting shopping and quiz programmes, or advertising their own subscription services.

Having a Freeview channel is like gold dust for a broadcaster now. But this means that if a company only has one channel on Freeview it has to make the most of what it’s got. Now, instead of each channel catering for its own niche, channels are scurrying around chasing the average viewer. So instead of having loads more choice than we did in the old days, we now have slightly more choice.

It’s a bit like local radio stations. There are millions of them, but as far as I can tell they are almost all exactly the same. Listeners don’t get choice here. They get the same bland middle-of-the-road pop music with over-excited presenters yelping over the top. I mean, how many radio stations have a slogan along the lines of “Classic hits and today’s best music, only on 97.3 Scrotum FM”? All of them?

Freeview still has a lot of quality channels. But most of the choice comes from the BBC, Channel 4 or (at a stretch) ITV. Even then, you sense that this is only because each of these broadcasters have multiple Freeview slots to fill.

Disney has one channel on Freeview: ABC1. Its diet of cheaply imported, inoffensive daytime-friendly American comedy has barely changed in years. Yawn.

BSkyB has three channels: Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Travel. That was, until they decided to replace Sky Travel with a general entertainment channel especially created for Freeview, Sky Three. So what about the fans of travel programmes? They’ll have to make do with gameshows that were originally shown on Sky One five years ago and cheaply imported American comedies. Boring. (Apart from Futurama, of course!)

Even Channel Five couldn’t manage to come up with interesting Freeview channels. Overnight it brings us The Great Big British Quiz, one of the worst quiz channels there is! Past the watershed, Five US is filled with wall to wall repeats of CSI. During the day we are treated to cheaply imported (imported from the past, that is) episodes of Happy Days and comedy backwater Joey. Pass me the pillow.

Five Life is so inconsequential, I won’t even go into it. All it ever seems to show is The Ellen DeGeneres Show (a cheaply imported American chat show). I shat my duvet out of boredom.

The latest culprit to contribute to the increasingly tumbleweed-infested airwaves is Viacom, whose sole Freeview channel is TMF. It used to be called The Music Factory. Just one problem. You’ll never find any music on it. This was understandable when it showed MTV programmes such as Newlyweds or Dirty Sanchez. For one thing, it brought MTV programmes into terrestrial homes which I guess you should be grateful for. And there was still a (tenuous) link to music.

But now TMF has brought into its schedule “classic comedies” such as Cheers, Ally McBeal and The Wonder Years. WTF!!! TMF is now even unrecognisable to what it was last week, never mind a few years ago! What do these programmes have to do with music?

Even the higher quality Freeview channels, such as ITV2, More4 or E4 show more than their fair share of American comedy and drama. Sky took off their travel channel to show more American programmes. MTV have changed their music channel beyond recognition to show more American programmes. Now Channel Five have an entire channel dedicated to it. So where has the variety gone? We may have more choice, but we no longer have variety.

But there is a silver lining! Ftn has been on Freeview almost since the very start, but it was easily the most uneventful channel on the lineup. This was despite all the potential. It could draw from the pool of Flextech channels, which surely have a few quality programmes to rub together. But whoever was responsible obviously didn’t care. Ftn was like a piece of shit on your shoe that you hate so much that you won’t even bother to wash it off, so instead you scrape your shoe all over the pavement as you walk along and hope that it just goes away. Yes, Ftn was exactly like that.

Until now, that is. On New Year’s Day, Ftn’s schedule was shaken up to include more quality programmes. The phone-in quiz shows and Thomas Cook TV segments have gone, and they’ve been replaced with repeats of The Crystal Maze, The Krypton Factor and Bullseye!

Wow! Those were three of my favourite programmes when I was young! The fact that these programmes are now almost twenty years old messes with my mind. What’s even more amazing is just how much of The Crystal Maze I can actually remember, despite it being made way back in 1990.

I know what you’re thinking. These are just cheap repeats like all the other stuff. Well yeah, but at least it’s not Dawson’s Creek. Now, start the fans please!

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!