BBC America Game Show Newsflash

[itiparanoid13]

I just got this e-mail from BBC America...

Alex,
Thank you for taking the time to contact us.  You'll be happy to know
that
the original UK series, "The Weakest Link," hosted by Anne Robinson is
coming to BBC AMERICA beginning May 31, 2004.

Stay tuned to the channel, or visit our website at www.bbcamerica.com
for
further details and updates on your favorite shows.

Again, we thank you for your interest.

Best wishes,

Viewer Relations
BBC America

Well, what do you all think?  I personally can not wait to see their version.

[passwordplus]

Hey, great news since GSN won't acquire the George Gray episodes. Should be at least worth checking out.

[TravisP]

It would be interesting whether they do wreck the older shows like UK Gold did over in the UK, simple but long reason why.

UK Gold buys Series 1 (68 Episodes) in April 2003, to kick things off they did a 12 Hour Marathon entitled UK Ginger over the first weekend of April last year consisting of the odd Champions League Episode, Celebrity Special and Series 2 Episode. As from the following Monday they started from the Premiere episode onwards at a weekdaily process (Shown at 1pm and repeated later at 8pm). After the episodes was used and due to lack of ratings they repeated the run of Series 1 again and dropped the 8pm slot to leave the afternoon slot, after months of repeated loopholes and no hope of any rise of ratings as with Friends Like These they didn't acquire the further series and is now ditched at a 3am slot every weekday morning with the same Series 1 episodes.

Going back to the matter it would be interesting that if they do start from the beginning since the set looked more cheap then it is now while there were less banter and bitching coming from Anne.

Anyway I don't know much about US Cable or Satellite but is BBC America only available to digital cable viewers who also must pay an added subscription???

[itiparanoid13]

BBC America really depends on your cable provider.  BBC America is digital for me, but for some its cable.  I have Time Warner BTW.

[Card Shark]

[quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Apr 7 2004, 03:37 PM\'] I just got this e-mail from BBC America...

Alex,
Thank you for taking the time to contact us.  You'll be happy to know
that
the original UK series, "The Weakest Link," hosted by Anne Robinson is
coming to BBC AMERICA beginning May 31, 2004.

Stay tuned to the channel, or visit our website at www.bbcamerica.com
for
further details and updates on your favorite shows.

Again, we thank you for your interest.

Best wishes,

Viewer Relations
BBC America

Well, what do you all think?  I personally can not wait to see their version. [/quote]
 This should be interesting to see. I was actually talking with my brother earlier today about the UK version. He studied in Englad during the spring semester of 2001 and watched the show every day before it ever hit the U.S. He said that the reason why the show is better in the UK is because there is no studio audience. So, they don't need to pause for "oohs" and laughter after every single one of Anne's biting comments. I look forward to seeing what he's described.

[Don Howard]

Outstanding. That's one of the many many channels I get. Looking forward to seeing this. Thanks for the information. And there are no celebrity editions, I trust?

[itiparanoid13]

God I hope not.  I am American so I don't know anything about UK Weakest Link.  Someone on another board said there were like 2 series also; one was cheaper and another was called like "champions" edition and it was what the US version was based off of.  There is no word on which series it will be.  Anytime i get information, I always tell the public.  Anytime.

[tommycharles]

I look forward to seeing any UK Link. It has a completely different feel. There's a lot less emphasis on Anne being funny as there is on Anne being mean. The lack of an audience helps this...she's just allowed to be ruthless without having to stop for the "oooh"s.

One little point: the celeb shows were done slightly differently to the U.S. ones ...there's one minor difference: the charity of the winner is mentioned when they win, none of the others are known. So Anne still says "you leave with nothing" on the celeb shows. This probably makes a difference to NO ONE on this board except myself...but that phrase is so necessary to the feel of the show to me.

[inturnaround]

BBC America is also going to begin airing the reality/game show hybrid "Without Prejudice?" next month.

The basic premise, as far as I can tell, is that you have 10 people. 5 regular people on a panel judge the (sometimes) secretly filmed actions of the other 5. The judging panel can judge any way they want and each round, someone is eliminated from the 5 contestants. The person who is left at the end wins £50,000.
There's a better explanation here.

Liza Tarbuck hosts.

[J.R.]

Format wise, UK "Weakest Link" is exactly the same as our version except there are nine players and the top prize is a whopping £10,000 and the final banking round the money is tripled. According what I've been told, players rarely amass a bank larger than £2500

Out of curiosity. Does anyone know the smallest and largest banks ever won ?
-Joe R.

[TravisP]

[quote name=\'itiparanoid13\' date=\'Apr 7 2004, 09:17 PM\'] God I hope not.  I am American so I don't know anything about UK Weakest Link.  Someone on another board said there were like 2 series also; one was cheaper and another was called like "champions" edition and it was what the US version was based off of.  There is no word on which series it will be.  Anytime i get information, I always tell the public.  Anytime. [/quote]
There were two different series a Daytime series and a Primetime series. As most of you know that it kicked off as a Daytime show back in August 2000 without a studio audience and canned laughter "Thank goodness". Due to its popularity they decided to create a Primetime version for Wednesday nights so they gotten hold of 49 Champions from the first series and produced 7 Champions League Specials as it was simply called beacause of their previous wins but more ironically it went against ITV's live soccer coverage of the Uefa Champions League at the same time, mostly featuring English clubs like Man Utd, Arsenal etc...

The Primetime editions as mentioned above featured 7 players with a possible top prize of £20,000 with each top bank being £2,500 with the last round doubled. Also it had a studio audience. After the Champions League editions they focused on Celebrity Specials featuring stars from Casulty, Eastenders etc.. these were shown in 2001 after the first celebrity special were shown at Christmas Eve with the Daytime edition.

In 2002 they decided to change the Primetime format and extend the players to 9 as with the Daytime edition and have a top prize of £50,000 (So take the Daytime Chain and multiply by 5) they produced some regular episodes but it didn't grab the viewers but the Daytime edition was still popular. So further into 2002 they ditched normal contestants and continue with Celebrities, however even though it was shown in the early Saturday evening slot it still was grabbing the same ratings as with the Daytime edition. As of right now there is a decision to do a Primetime specials as a one-off and continue working on the Daytime version as last year there were something like 5 specials in the first quarter of the year but this year there are only 2, a Rugby Special and a Eurovision Special (Yet to air).

With Joe's question about bank totals I'm not sure as no-one has kept a record for this unlike I have with Millionaire since there were too many repeats and US specials messing up the schedule without warning but I think the highest & lowest are the following, remember these are close estimates:

Daytime (£10,000):
Lowest: £970
Highest: £5,140

We RARELY see teams break the £4,000 barrier these days as its practially the same with each episode of somewhere between £2,000-£3,000.

Primetime I (£20,000):
Lowest: £5,000
Highest: £10,000

Simply highere as there are 7 links in the chain.

Primetime II (£50,000):
Lowest: £5,000
Highest: £25,700 - Currently won on the Rugby Special shown last month.
While the 2nd highest is something like £23,000 won on an Olympics Special last year.

[TravisP]

[quote name=\'inturnaround\' date=\'Apr 8 2004, 12:46 AM\'] BBC America is also going to begin airing the reality/game show hybrid "Without Prejudice?" next month.

The basic premise, as far as I can tell, is that you have 10 people. 5 regular people on a panel judge the (sometimes) secretly filmed actions of the other 5. The judging panel can judge any way they want and each round, someone is eliminated from the 5 contestants. The person who is left at the end wins £50,000.
There's a better explanation here.

Liza Tarbuck hosts. [/quote]
 That is very good news as it's an interesting format worth watching without the need for trivia questions or solving a puzzle. It has been a sucess over here for 12 Yard and Channel 4. 12 Yard is a new company partly set up by David Young and the BBC, those might know David Young from his workings on Friends Like These and his current shows In It To Win It, which has just recorded a thrid series to start in May with an addition 3 shows to be recorded to make it 15 and Eggheads to be shown in the summer also not forgetting his invention of the "Penality Shoot-Out" format which is mostly used on shows he is alsp involved in (Eggheads, Weakest Link where he originally produced, Friends Like These, Rent Free and Here Comes The Sun).

There is a second series which is being shown at Channel 4 on Friday nights but even though it still contains the freshness of the last series it lacks realism since the prize is now dropped to £20,000 which knocks out the "life changing" amount while the show is now moved to 7.30pm which is before the watershed with swear words coming from the panel are now bleeped while the first series was shown at 9pm and was kept intact. Most of the panel are simply regular people and changes every week also there is nice move for this series as one of the winners was asked to come back the following show and became a member of the panel.

I would expect BBC America to give it a weekly slot as simply there are only 6 shows in the first series.

[Brig Bother]

Hang on man, this isn't actually quite right.

The original Champion's League eps featured eight contestants and a total bank of £20,000.

In 2002 (although come to think it might have been 2001) they created some shorter "prime time" editions of the show (scheduled for 35 minutes, in fact more like 40) featuring only seven players (this is the set up used in the computer game, fact fans) but these were pretty much burnt off over that Christmas in lunchtime slots. The idea was, I think, that they were due to go out on Saturday evenings (I was in the audience for one of them which is where I heard this) but I don't think that ever happened.

The £50,000 version began with normal people but are now exclusively played with celebrities. Interestingly I saw an episode taped last year or the year before featuring normal people but I don't recall any civilian £50K eps going out since they started showing the celebrity episodes. Hmm.

The highest bank was well over £5,500 as I recall on an "interesting men" special. I think that's what it was about anyway. They hit their target at least four times.

[TravisP]

[quote name=\'Brig Bother\' date=\'Apr 8 2004, 07:15 AM\'] The £50,000 version began with normal people but are now exclusively played with celebrities. Interestingly I saw an episode taped last year or the year before featuring normal people but I don't recall any civilian £50K eps going out since they started showing the celebrity episodes. Hmm. [/quote]
The civilian £50K was shown eventually sometime last year on Friday's replacing a standard Daytime episode for a few weeks.

Just checked the episodes and it is 8 people for the Champions League, but I seem to recall a Comic Relief Special shown back in 2001 on the Friday lunchtime, only lasted 30 Mins which was similar to the US NBA Half-Time Special which had a ultra-tight time limit for each round.

[uncamark]

My guess is that what we're going to be seeing over here is the BBC2 5:15 p.m. strip version, since 44 minutes can easily be fit into an U.S. cable TV hour without any strain.  The commercial breaks will probably fall more or less in the same places as on the U.S. network version.

And I'm looking forward to seeing "Without Prejudice?" on U.S. TV--whatever I've seen of Liza Tarbuck, I've liked very much (including her stints as "Just a Minute!" panelist).  She's smart and charming without any of the vacuousness that a lot of her fellow young female UK "presenters" seem to have (we were "treated" to a cameo from the audience of Kate Thornton Tuesday night on "Idol" talking briefly to Seacrest and she didn't impress).  Helps, of course, that her dad has some solid experience fronting game shows, too.