If you’re wanting to make a ton of cash out of gullible people, setting up a shopping channel is no longer the way to go. Scaryduck takes a look at the newest craze, remarkably scammy quiz channels.

There’s a new one coming to Freeview called Quiz Call that appears to have the involvement of Channel 4. From the promo loop they’ve got there at the moment it looks absolutely horrid, cheap, nasty, whatever. But they are promising nice simple things like word grid puzzle type things.

More like Brainteaser, not the ridiculous “Mr and Mrs Pizza bought fifteen pizzas for their three children and ate sixty pizzas themselves. How many pizzas?” nonsense that you get on Big Game TV (which is currently plaguing the schedules of late night ITV2), where the answer appears to be some random number plucked from thin air.

“Yes, there are definitely 3276 pizzas there. Next question!”

I heard that this is nothing compared with what you get on Quiz TV though. Somehow I can’t quite believe that these channels aren’t illegal yet. Remember Ofcom catching AuctionWorld after goodness-knows-how-long (incidentally, a development that didn’t stop shopping channels from selling dodgy goods, but only made them get rid of ‘guide prices’).

Unfortunately I would be surprised if Quiz Call is the only quiz channel to end up on Freeview. The format is perfect for Freeview, because the 60p per second telephone calls provide the handy revenue that they miss out on by not being on a pay TV package. It used to be shopping channels. There are already four shopping channels on Freeview, and now we’re getting the quiz channels. Oh man!