Secondary Research

Secondary Research Internet Research

What makes a good TV show?

http://www.manic-expression.com/in-too-deep-what-makes-a-good-game-show/

suppose the smartest place to start is what I mean by a Game Show to begin with. After all, things like Survivor or Big Brother aren’t ‘game shows’, despite the fact that there is a game element to them. No a Game Show has to involve a few important things:

Firstly, there must be an actual game to it, in the sense that there are clearly defined rules and ways to win/lose. For example, you have to answer a certain number of questions, or pick the correct number. Now while the latter is luck compared to the former being skill, there is still a clear concept behind it. There is a game to this show, after all.

Secondly, the game is the focus of the show. While similar to point one, it’s where game shows differ from reality TV shows. The appeal of Survivor and Big Brother is the contestants, more so than the ‘games’ they play. We’re more concerned with the larger narrative of who goes and who stays over the smaller narrative of who wins each round. So while these shows have games to them, that’s the last thing the producers want us to focus on.

Finally, the game must be set up so the viewer is rooting for the contestant. This is in contrast to shows like Wipeout, where the appeal is seeing people fail in funny ways (and where playing by the rules is the stupidest thing someone could do, since it’s more efficient to ‘fail’ and swim for the finish line, since the first challenge is time-based). The point of the show is for the contestant to win, not for the contestant to lose.

So with that classification out of the way, what actually makes a game show good?

Well there are three parts to pretty much every game show: The game, the show, and the host. So lets break these three down to their individual parts. The game is, perhaps, the most important part of the entire endeavour. Or at least it is to me, since I’ve never really been invested in the contestant parts of these shows. Now a game can be a rather simple “Answer these questions to get X amount of money”, or they can be complex. The most important thing is that the game isn’t breakable. It’s a common problem in game shows, where it comes to a point where playing the game is disadvantageous. An example (from a show whose run was so short I forgot the name) went like this:

Round one had each question worth one point, with there being five point questions scattered through. So if someone did well in the first round (getting a lot of one point questions right, and the two five point questions), they’d have a comfortable lead going into the second round. Now in this round each question was worth two points but, if you got it wrong, you were locked out of answering the next question. So, lets say you have a somewhat comfortable lead, but could easily lose due to other people getting more questions right. What do you do?

Well the simple way (that no one ever seemed to think to do) was to buzz in for every single question, even if you didn’t know the answer. Why? Because while you wouldn’t get those two points, your opponents wouldn’t get those two points either. They’d be given the next question to answer, which they may or may not know. So lets say that there are ten questions in this round, and you’re in the lead by twelve points. If you buzz in for half the answers, even if you get them wrong, that stops the opponent from scoring ten points. So even if you don’t get any right, you’re still in the lead since they have no way of catching up to you. You’ve locked them out of getting enough points. Now clearly this requires quick mental calculation (since the round was based on time, rather than overall amount of questions), but once you’re safe enough ahead it becomes in your best interest to sabotage your opponents. Better for your opponent to get two points when you get locked out than them getting four points because you did nothing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7824167.stm

What makes a good Daytime TV show?

The phrase “game show” is not one laden with positive connotations.

Along with its cousin “quiz show”, it conjures up unpleasant images in the mind of the enemies of dumbing down in modern television. They think of overlit studios where  former local radio DJs scatter corny quips as sweating contestants struggle to name the capital of Italy or tackle three-letter anagrams.

game show’s success is all about pitching it at the right intelligence level, says William G Stewart, producer and presenter of Fifteen to One for 15 years until 2003, and twice a guest presenter on Countdown.
“They must be at a level of intelligence that the viewers will appreciate. The longest running and most appreciated quiz shows have always been intelligent ones like Mastermind and University Challenge. Countdown [despite not technically being a quiz show] comes into that category.”

In a daytime or teatime show, this aspect is particularly important. The picking up of viewers from the previous show, the “inheritance”, may be less of a factor than on a primetime Saturday night show.

The game show needs to be a distinctive offering for intellectually under-occupied segments of the audience like retirees and students. And they want to feel almost as if they are taking part, says Countdown “octochamp” and Fifteen to One series winner Jack Welsby.

“The main thing is that people can play along at home. You have the same constraints as the contestants.”

 

The Chase: how to make the perfect daytime Gameshow

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/jun/28/the-chase-gameshow-itv

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes the perfect daytime gameshow. We’ve got so many of them – general knowledge shows hosted by angry consumer rights dominatrixes, shows influenced by Bayes’ theorem of conditional probability and, in Golden Balls, a show that literally nobody on the face of the planet is able to understand – but none of them has yet managed to achieve perfection.

Maybe if we mashed together elements from all the other daytime gameshows, the resulting Frankenstein-style atrocity would be the greatest daytime TV gameshow ever. So let’s try doing that.

• Format: We’ll stick to basic general knowledge questions. It works for The Weakest Link, it works for Eggheads and it’ll work for us. Anything else – anything that could encourage Noel Edmonds to pop up and start droning on about universal energy like some sort of badly-dressed Jesus figure – is strictly no-go.

But where’s the challenge? Who are the contestants up against? Each other? Maybe a decade ago. A faceless banker on the end of a telephone line? That’s just creepy. An unbeatable foe like the Eggheads panel? Perfect.

That said, Deal Or No Deal shouldn’t be a complete write-off. The bargaining aspect – letting the contestants effectively choose their own prize – is very clever, so let’s steal that as well.

• Tone: Nasty. At least as nasty as The Weakest Link, obviously. Who wants to watch a gameshow where people are genial and treat each other with respect? This isn’t the 1950s, for crying out loud. People want blood.

• Rules: Remember that a contemporary daytime gameshow wouldn’t be a contemporary daytime quiz show unless it came with a set of rules so monumentally impenetrable that, like Golden Balls, each episode tends to comprise one part game to about 36 parts painstaking explanation. So let’s make our show several times more confusing than it needs to be.

• Host: A newsreader? No. A former comedian like Duel’s Nick Hancock or Jasper Carrott from Golden Balls? Possibly, but let’s find someone with a little bit more gameshow experience.Bradley Walsh? He briefly hosted Wheel Of Fortune. He’ll do.