Rad 2 a Brief Potted History of the Quiz Show on British Television

8/2/2019 Rad 2 a Brief Potted History of the Quiz Show on British Television

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PREDMET: MEDIJSKA PRODUKCIJA

NASTAVNIK: prof.dr Stanko CRNOBRNJA

SARADNIK: mr Luka Belagi

A Brief Potted History of the Quiz Show on British Television

The British TV Quiz Show - a potted History

The first ever game show on British Television was called Spelling Bee, and it aired on

the BBC in 1938. This game was based upon the very american practice of teams or

individuals taking it in turns to spell out words of varying complexity. This is hardly

surprising since it was conceived as a match between teams from the UK and the US.How on earth did they manage with local spelling variations, I wonder - colour/color for

example. As a game show rather than a quiz show it falls rather out of our remit, but is

worthy of mention since it gave rise to several spin offs, including General Knowledge

Bee. Next to nothing of the format is known, except for the fact that it took the form of

matches between teams such as BBC Childrens' North, Scotland and Wales. Its very

probable that this was the first real quiz on Television.

At the outbreak of world war II the BBC ceased its television service - in the middle of a

Mickey Mouse cartoon, as it happened !It didn't recommence its television service until7th June 1947, incidentally with the same Mickey Mouse cartoon . The resurrected BBC

TV service showed little or no sign of becoming the most important popular medium ofthe second half of the 20th century in 1947. Programming showed a complete distatste

for anything that might be termed popular. On the other hand radio, which was goingthrough what would later be termed its golden age, was the home of truly popular

programming. Its notable that 2 long running favourite quizzes began in this period onBBC radio. "Top of the Form ", a quiz between two teams of schoolchildren, lasted from

1948 right up until 1986. This pales a bit compared to "The Round Britain Quiz", whichbegan in 1947, and is still going strong. "Brain of Britain" also began in 1953, as part of a

programme called "What do You Know "?

1953 was a year when things were going to begin to change for the fledgeling television

service. The televising of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953 resulted in a massiveupsurge in television sales, and television rentals. This didn't result in a great change in

the BBC's output, but it did create an audience for a very different kind of programming.All that was necessary now was a channel to service that audience. Since the start of the

50s debate had raged in Parliament over whether commercial television should be

allowed in the UK. After several years of wrangling, the bill which led to the

establishment of ITV was passed in 1954.Although ITV opened in 1955, it was a couple

of years before the whole of the UK were able to receive it. However when they did, this

new mass audience found that some of its output was very different to the output of the

corporation, with some shows owing far more to programming on the other side of the

Atlantic. Such a show was Take Your Pick, the first ever ITV quiz show.


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"Take Your Pick" was based on a quiz in Michael Miles' own show on Radio

Luxembourg, and not upon an American original, but it could have been , since it

contained some of the key ingredients already familiar to American viewers, but so newand exciting to British ones. The contestants were for the most part members of thegeneral public, working class accents and all. The host, Michael Miles, was, well, a host,

with insincere chat and fake concern for the losers, just as has become de rigeur eversince. Above all else, there were prizes. The essence of the show was that contestants

would be asked three questions. Those who got the three questions right would be offereda choice of ten keys to boxes. Miles would then offer them increasing amounts of money

to buy back the key. If they kept the key, then they got to open the box - which mightcontain a star prize, and might contain the booby prize.

The prize was something new. BBC understandably could not afford to be seen to be

giving away their precious license fee. Commercial television though was under no suchconstraints. There was never any danger that the prizes were going to reach the excesses

of their american counterparts, though, since the maximum prize anyone could win on

British TV was capped by law at 1000. It remained at this for years.

Hot on the heels of "Take Your Pick" came another Radio Luxembourg creation, "Double

Your Money". This was presented by Canadian Hughie Greene. His mid-atlantic accent,

and his 'friends, I mean that most sincerely' brand of insincerity brought a touch of

glamour, which mid 50s Britain was sorely in need of. There was no messing about with

prizes or booby prizes, this show was simply about winning cash. You would start off

with a simple question for one pound. Each following question would 'double your

money', until you reached the dizzying heights of 32 for answering 6 questions. Thenyou would progress to the Treasure Trail, which could lead to the dizzying heights ofwinning up to 1000. However, and here's the rub, one single wrong answer would lead

to you losing the lot. You could bail out at any time, though. If this format seemsfamiliar, then its hardly surprising. With minimal changes to the format, and different

amounts of money, you've got "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire".

Both "Take Your Pick " and "Double Your Money" were produced by AssociatedRediffusion, and when they lost their franchise in 1968 both shows came to an abrupt

end, even though they were still incredibly popular. Its worth noting that these two showsestablished the template of the prize quiz show, and its a template which is still as

popular today, even though the names of the shows, and the particular formats havechanged.

So, lets recap. The first two quizzes that appeared on British commercial Television, very

American in character, actually originated on Radio Luxembourg. How ironic then thatone of the most British of quizzes, University Challenge, was based on an American

original, "College Bowl" which ran in its first incarnation from 1953 to 1970. Surely

there was never an ITV quiz that was quite so essentially BBC in character, and itssomehow appropriate that the BBC brought the show to its spiritual home in 1994. The

original version lasted from 1962 until 1987, and the erudite and gentlemanly Bamber


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Gascoigne presented the show for the whole of its run. Since being revived in 1994 theshow has been presented by the combative and irascible Jeremy Paxman, chalk to

Gascoigne's cheese.

Both incarnations were broadcasting institutions. Critics of the series have claimed thatthere is a bias to Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and whether this is true or not the fact

is that more people have subsequently become famous in the media after an earlyappearence on this show than any other quiz.

An extent of the affection this quiz is held in by the British public can be seen from the

number of times it has been parodied on other shows. Two notable examples are the Notthe Nine O'Clock News' HM Prison Challenge, and Scumbag College versus Footlights

College Oxbridge in The Young Ones. Griff Rhys Jones played Bamber Gascoigne in

both of these, and Stephen Fry, who played Lord Snot in the Footlights team, had played

in the show for real for Queen's College Cambridge.

The public may have taken the show to its heart, but it would be hard to make out a case

that the show has been influential at all. Apart from its own recent spin off, "University

Challenge , the Professionals" virtually no other show seems to have been inspired by it.The BBCs TV Top of the Form was clearly a television version of its own radio show

Top of the Form, which was first aired 14 years before University Challenge. On the

contrary, most of the quizzes on commercial television to a greater or lesser extent

followed the tried and tested format established by "Double Your Money" and "Take

Your Pick " of ordinary members of the public asking a limited number of questions for

money in a game format.

A good example of this sort of show was "Criss Cross Quiz". Unlike the two earliershows this was actually based on an american original, called "Tic Tac Dough".

Presumably this title was though a little too vulgar even for ITV in 1957. It had a simpleformat. Contestants played a game of noughts and crosses. A board of 9 squares would

have the title of a different category. If a contestant answered the question of thatcategory correctly, then they could place their nought or cross in the square. Criss Cross

Quiz lasted for 10 years, and managed to even get around the 1000 limit, by allowingvictorious contestants to return. Once one competitor reached over 2000, and a limit to

the amount of times you could return was swiftly imposed.

Criss Cross Quiz was one of the first quiz shows to take its format from an existing game,and one of the most succesful to do so. Since then we have seen quizzes based on Trivial

Pursuit, Cluedo, Sudoku, Scrabble, Bingo and others, with limited success it must benoted.

In the 50s and into the early 60s you'd have been hard put to find a popular quiz in the

BBC's TV schedules. Their answer was "The Brains Trust". This was never really a quiz,

though. Viewers sent in questions , which were to be answered by a panel, who wereexpected to talk intelligently on whichever subject was covered by the chosen question.

Very safe BBC programming, it had originated on the radio, and lasted in its TV version


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from 1955 to the early 60s. From 1957 there was Ask Me Another, based on the RadioShow What do you Know, which ran for a few years, where a team of resident experts

played a team of challengers. Unable and probably unwilling to offer valuable prizes, the

best the BBC could do was try to revamp some of their successful radio quizzes forTelevision. Probably the most successful of these was Television Top of the Form. Theradio version ran from 1948 to 1986, but the TV version itself had a good run, from 1962

to 1976. It took the form of a general knowledge quiz between teams of secondary schoolchildren. As an interesting aside, Judith Chalmers was going to be the original presenter ,

but the BBC bosses put a stop to this, in the belief that audiences would not possiblyaccept a female question master as being authoritative enough !

Quizzes for children, or children's teams have featured on our screens in several versions

and formats down the years. Particularly popular ones have been Blockbusters for 6 form

students, and Junior Mastermind for children up to 11.

Possibly the first BBC attempt to make a genuinely original quiz for Television was

Quizball. Aired first in world cup year of 1966, it took the form of a football match. The

difficulty of the question would determine how close to goal you came. This was light

years away from the stuffy , traditional BBC format, although members of the publicwere still conspicuous by their absence. Teams consisted of players from the respective

club, together with a celebrity supporter. It was the first popular quiz on television with a

sport theme, predating A Question of Sport by 4 years.

As different and original as Quizball was, it was a very far cry from what was on offer on

ITV by the end of the 60s. In 1967 the concept of the fullfledged Game Show, in which a

quiz really played no part at all, burst onto the screens in the shape of ITVs "The GoldenShot" , and from this point we can make a distinction between those Game shows whichare purely games, and those which are based around a quiz, which is what we are

concerned with.

By 1970, a full quarter of a century after the opening of ITV,little had really changedsince 1955. ITV quiz shows , with the exception of "University Challenge" tended to

feature 'ordinary' members of the public trying to win prizes by answering questionscorrectly. The shows tended to be glossy, especially after the arrival of colour television,

and to place an emphasis on fun rather than the competitive aspect of a quiz. HughieGreene's 1971 show" The Sky's The Limit" was essentially a revamped Double Your

Money, with holidays to more and more exotic destinations being the prizes instead ofcash. "Sale of the Century" began as a Regional Quiz in the same year, going national in

1972. In this , three contestants played against each other on the buzzer to answer generalknowledge questions. Considering how often buzzers are used in quizzes now, its

interesting to note that this is actually a very early example of a TV buzzer quiz. Correctanswers earned pounds, that could be spent on Instant Sales during the show, and the

winner could spend in The Sale of The Century at the end of the show. Egghead Daphne

Fowler made her first TV appearence in this show.

Other variations on the ITV quiz theme during the next few years included Celebrity


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Squares and Winner Takes All.Celebrity Squares was based on the American show"Hollywood Squares" the twist was that two contestants face a board of 9 squares. Each

square contained a celebrity. Actually, some of them were rather more 'square' than

'celebrity' , still, I digress. Each contestant would nominate a celebrity, and answer, thendecide whether they had answered correctly or not. If they were right, then they wouldearn money. Winner Takes All was a straight general knowledge quiz. The twist was that

each player would be given 50 to start , and then have to risk some of this on eachquestion. With a good run a player could earn a significant amount of money. The player

with the most money at the end of the game was the winner.

Over on the BBC, at least the BBC were staring to produce some original quiz shows.However these still tended to obey certain time honoured precepts. Quizzes still tended

towards the serious and educational. Prizes were only given in the form of a trophy to

series winners. Members of the public who were allowed to take part in such shows were

as a rule solidly middle class. The only people allowed to be seen to be having fun on aquiz show were celebrities such as the sportsmen on "A Question of Sport" or the actors,

actresses and men and ladies of letters on "Call My Bluff". This is not to suggest that the

BBC did not at last make some fine contributions to the TV Quiz genre in the 70s. "Ask

the Family" which had first aired in 1967 really got into its stride , a stride whichcontinued right through until 1984. Presented by witty Robert Robinson, a future

presenter of Radio 4's Brain of Britain, it was a clever and innovative show, which

combined mental agility tests and puzzles with General Knowledge Questions. Questions

could be open to the whole family , or specially for father and younger child, or mother

and older child. Like University Challenge its popularity was shown by being parodied in

Not the Nine O Clock News. Even in its time it was criticised for the very middle class

nature of the families, and despite its decade long popularity its difficult to think of othershows that have been inspired by it, barring a 1990s UK Gold channel revival,and the illfated Dick and Dom's Ask the Family in 2005.

In 1972, Mastermind first aired. The idea of a tournament quiz to find a general

knowledge champion was not new - Brain of Britain on the radio was already a longrunning series, and had made a brief transfer to television a few years earlier. However

this was a quiz created specifically for television, which had a very strong identity.Creator Bill Wright based it on an interrogation, shrewdly seeing that the tension and

drama would come from each contender's response to the ordeal of the questioning fromthe magisterial Magnus Magnusson. Created as a special interest show, with a small

intended late night audience on the new BBC2 channel, Mastermind was put onto themain channel at peak viewing time when a slightly risque comedy show was taken off

due to pressure from Mary Whitehouse and her National Viewers and ListenersAssociation.It achieved a huge audience, and remained an annual fixture in the BBCs

schedules until 1997. In an ironic reversal, Mastermind, with new question master PeterSnow transferred to radio, where the 1998,9 and 2000 series were broadcast. Revived in a

changed format by the Discovery Channel in 2001, BBC showed a Celebrity version of

the show in 2002, and then returned it to BBC with the original format, and new questionmaster John Humphrys in 2003.


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Unlike almost any other TV quiz show up to that time, Mastermind produced championquizzers, whose achievements were recognised. By the 1980s, some of its champions

even became national celebrities, although we will look at this in more detail in the next

section.

Perhaps subconsciously inspired by Mastermind, ITV created The Krypton Factor in

1977, which it would hail as "Britain's Toughest Quiz" , a claim which other showswould also make about themselves. Actually, a general knowledge quiz was only the last

section of the show, which consisted of other mental challenges, and the physicalchallenge of an assault course. Like Mastermind the show paid no attention at all to the

personality of the contenders. The aim was to produce an overall series champion. Thetone and atmosphere was extremely serious, and the host the often stern Gordon Burns.

The show was extremely successful, and ran until 1997. Slight tweaks were made to the

format throughout the show's long run, for example, in limiting the amount of General

knowledge questions asked after a number of good general knowledge quizzers beatbetter all round competitors with an exceptional showing on the buzzer.

Into the 80s

The encroachment on the BBCs territory that ITV had made with The Krypton Factor

continued into the 80s, and in some ways was reciprocated by the BBC. ITV unveiled

their most serious attempt at a big, straight, Mastermind - type quiz with the 1982 Top of

the World. This allied Mastermind style specialist and general knowledge questions with

a serious top prize - a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. The biggest of ITVs big guns, Eamonn

Andrews , was the presenter. The Unique Selling point of the quiz was that none of the

competitors were with Eamonn in the studio. Instead he was faced by three TV screens,one showing the UKs competitor, one showing a competitor in the US, and the othershowing a competitor in Australia and New Zealand. Its a fascinating concept, and

probably ahead of its time, but it never caught on, and in commercial television, andincreasingly the corporation as well, you don't get a second chance to make a first

impression.

A year later, in 1983, ITV launched Blockbusters on an unsuspecting nation. In thisteams of 6th form students answered questions to earn spaces on a board made up of

hexagons, a little bit like the old Criss Cross Quiz. Apart from the board, one of itsunique features was that a team of two would play against a team of one. The tagline of

the show was to see if two brains were better than one. In practice the answer was yes in9 times out of 10. Winners went on to face a gold run - completing a line of five spaces

across the board, for a prize. Winners were allowed up to 5 gold runs, of increasinglymore valuable prizes. The original show lasted for ten years, but has been resurrected

more than once since, and who is to say that its simple but effective format won't berevived in some form in the future.

Meanwhile, over at Auntie Beeb, by the second half of the 80s they were finally ready tomake the Great Leap Forward into the 1970s. While shows like "Mastermind" continued

going from strength to strength, the reaction to the champions were changing. In 1980


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London cab driver Fred Housego won a tense final, and overnight became a nationalcelebrity. He was certainly very different from the teachers, academics and civil servants

who had monopolised the title in the 70s. Fred became a broadcaster in his own right.

then, just when the corporation were getting over this, in 1983 London Underground traindriver Christopher Hughes won. Hughes had appeared in the previous year's Top of theWorld, and he too went on to have his own career in broadcasting.

As early as the 1970s the BBC had produced a fully fledged game show, featuring

ordinary members of the public, with the remarkably succesful Generation Game. Thiswas followed before the end of the decade by such shows as "Blankety Blank". However

the BBC still seemed to baulk at a genuine quiz game show that offered either prizes ofcash, or valuable consumer items. At long last, the BBC finally steeled themselves to

produce a quiz with a prize that was actually worth winning. In 1984, "Bob's Full House"

took to our screens. Presented, as the title suggests, by Bob Monkhouse, this was a show

that would not have looked out of place on ITV, which was surely the intention.Contestants answered questions corresponding to a square on a board. Prizes were gained

for completing a line, and then a whole card. The winner would go through to play the

big game card, with the main prize being a luxury holiday. The show was very succesful,

and lasted for 6 years. During this period the BBC proved that they could repeat thissuccess, as it was followed by Every Second Counts in 1986

In 1987 the BBC introduced "Going For Gold", with the main prize an all expenses paid

trip to see the Olympic Games in Seoul. This was an interesting, and some would even

say seminal quiz show for a number of reasons.Like "Top of the World" , the show pitted

contestants from the UK against those from other countries. Unlike the earlier show,

though, all of the contestants were in the same studio, and were European as opposed toAmerican or antipodean. This avoided the transmission delay problems of Top of TheWorld, but seemed rather unfair to those contestants whose first language was not

English.

As a daytime show, BBC were able to show Going for Gold on consecutive days, a laBlockbusters. This meant that they were able to use the format whereby all the

contestants stay for the whole week, getting second and third and so on chances if theydidn't win Monday's show.

It was a general knowledge quiz, with different rounds of different formats. The best

remembered round was the final game, where question master Henry Kelly would givesuccessive clues to a person, or place, which contestants could answer with the least clues

for 4 points, or the most clues for 1 point, or in between for 2 or 3. The catch was that thetime was divided into 4 zones. Player A would have the 4 point and the 2 point zones,

player B the 3 and the 1 point zones. They could only buzz in to answer in their ownzones, but if an opponent answered wrongly they would automatically gain control of that

zone. Its easier to play than to describe, and has been used with almost no changes in

several other quizzes since, including 2008's The Battle of the Brains.

Channel 4


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In 1982 Channel 4 began broadcasting, and its very first programme was the game show

"Countdown". After 25 years, and several different presenters it shows absolutely no sign

of losing its popularity, and it established the mid afternoon, before teatime slot as verymuch its own property among a very significant slice of the viewing audience. In 1988Channel 4 launched 15 to 1. In time the prestige of being a 15 to 1 Grand Final winner

matched that of being a Mastermind Champion. Players were given three lives, and themain aim for the first part of the show was not to lose lives by answering questions

wrongly. In the second half of the show the last three contestants standing would playagainst each other, choosing to either answer questions themselves for points, or

nominate another player to answer them. A player could only win by being the last playerleft alive, then they would continue to answer questions until they were all used up, or

they lost their remaining lives.

What was essen thetially new about the show was the idea that contestants could actuallyplay to eliminate their opposition. Highest scores went onto the series' leaderboard, for

the fifteen places in the Grand Final.

After 'Mastermind' transferred to Radio 4 in 1998 "15 to 1 " ruled unchallenged as themost prestigious and challenging quiz on TV. After 15 years it was finally axed in 2003,

ironically in the same year that "Mastermind" returned to BBCTV. As a piece of trivia,

Kevin Ashman is the only person to win both the 15 to 1 Grand Final and Mastermind.

For good measure he has also won radio's Brain of Britain !

The 90s

The 80s saw some of the most successful and long running quizzes come to the end oftheir runs - Ask the Family and University Challenge to name but two. However for all

this , at the start of the 90s many of the big shows - Mastermind, Fifteen to One , and TheKrypton Factor were all still going strong, and pulling in significant audience figures. By

1998, however the quiz show landscape had changed perceptibly. Gone were Mastermindand the Krypton Factor, the former being transferred temporarily to radio, before finding

its way back to BBC TV via the Discovery Channel. From 1998 Fifteen to One reignedsupreme as the connoisseur's quiz.

A year earlier,in 1997 , Britain's 5th terrestrial television channel, the imaginatively

named Channel 5 , began broadcasting, and in its first weeks it unveiled its first entry intothe quiz show genre - 100%. This was a genuinely different kind of quiz show. For one

thing the contestants didn't speak at all, apart from a brief hello at the start of the show.The host and question master, former continuity announcer and local newscaster, Robin

Houston, never appeared as anything other than a disembodied voice. All contestantsfaced the same 100 multiple choice questions, and the one with the highest percentage of

correct answers would win, and come back the next day.

On the surface it was an clever new show, and certainly probably the fairest quiz on TV,

with all contestants facing the same 100 questions. However it was very much pitched


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against 15 to 1, where it inevitably suffered by comparison. The format lacked drama andexcitement, and even for hardened quizzers who much prefer questions to chat it suffered

through having far too many silly questions. Having said that it did spawn two spin-offs ,

100% Gold and 100% Sex.

So 100% was obviously not the shape of things to come. This didn't appear until the

following year, 1998, when Who Wants To Be A Millionaire first came to our screens.This show had an instant impact, and ITV were clever enough to trail it across five nights

a week. Within a couple of days it became the most talked about and most watched showon British Television.

The incredible impact that WWTBAM had is all the more remarkable when you consider

what a traditional show it is. At the heart of it is a format, answering questions for

increasingly large amounts of money - one question wrong and you're out - , that can be

traced back to Hughie Greene's Double Your Money. Of course the show was not and isnot totally lacking in originality. The lifelines were a neat idea, and a great device for

increasing the drama of the show. 'Phone A Friend' as a phrase has passed into common

English usage, joining a select band of quiz show idioms which have passed beyond the

narrow confines of their show - 'pass' and 'starter for ten' being two other examples.

Derivative though the show may have been, its influence on what has come to our screens

since is huge. No other quiz show has been sold to so many other countries. Only the

Weakest Link begins to come close.

Not that anyone actually won the million pounds for quite a long time. 122 shows came

and went before future Egghead Judith Keppel scooped top prize. Allegations were madein the popular press that this may have been rigged to spoil the BBCs ratings gambit ofkilling off Victor Meldrew on the same night, but there has never been a scrap of proof

for this.

In one of the most bizarre occurences in quiz show history, Major Charles Ingramachieved immortality from apparently cheating his way to the 1 million pounds. All of

which contributes to a seriously colourful history, and so WWTBAM's importance in thehistory of the british quiz show must not be underestimated. Its certainly been influential.

Probably the most succesful of the quiz shows to have come along in the wake of

WWTBAM is The Weakest Link, which is the pick of the shows created since the end ofthe 90s. Beginning in 2000, although using , like WWTBAM a predominantly blue set,

TWL recognised that the BBC cannot afford a truly massive first prize. In fact the winnerrarely walks away with much more than 3000, and quite often with less. The hook on

the show was the fact that contestants got a chance to vote each other off the show - a laBig Brother, Survivor and other reality shows, and also the fact that the host, Anne

Robinson, would be mean to the contestants, especially if they gave a silly answer to a

question, which, lets face it, was not an unusual occurence. Up until TWL hit the screensthe question masters and hosts had been restricted to exuding the insincere bonhomie of a

used car salesman. TWL changed that completely.


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Other contemporary quiz show creations have been less successful. Consider The Vault.

ITV must have had big hopes for this one when it was unveiled in 2002, as it was shown

at prime time on Saturday evenings, and one of their big guns, Davina McCall wasbrought in to front the show. It was a knock out show, with three contestants answeringquestions to progress through to round Two, where two remaining contestants would

fight it out for the right to go for the big money in the final. Not the most original show.However where it did show a little originality was in the presence of brokers. A group of

brokers representing different professions would be present in the studio, and offer togive answer for money, through bartering with contestants. But it just wasn't original

enough. The prize, a potential 250,000 was huge, but not huge enough. When the showwas moved to midweek, and Melanie Sykes took over from Davina McCall, the writing

was on the wall. It struggled on for a couple of series, finally ending in 2004.

Two years before The Vault hit our screens, the BBC offered us The Syndicate. In someways this was similar to Masterteam from the 80s, although updated for the Noughties.

Teams of four faced three rounds of questions - general knowledge to start, followed by a

specialist round nominated an hour earlier by the other team, and finally general

knowledge to finish. Captain nominates who should answer the question. Get one wrongand you're out, and once the team's wiped out, that's it. It was a little complicated, and

although it wasn't a bad show it never caught on. Writing as I am in 2008 it does seem

that there's a gap in the market for a serious team quiz show , especially when you think

how many people throughout the length and breadth of the UK do play in team quizzes

every week.

One of the BBC's most serious attempts to ride the coat tails of WWTBAM was 2002'sThe Chair. In a nice throw back to the way things worked in days gone by, this was areworking of an American show. Presented by John McEnroe, it offered a theoretical top

prize of 50,000. OK, chicken feed when compared to Millionaire, but a serious amountof cash for the BBC. The gimmick behind the show was that it was about keeping your

cool. Contestants had their pulse rates measured before the start of the show. Then their'redline' figure was given as 170 % of this. Heart rate was measured while they were

playing, and everytime they went over the redline they couldn't give an answer to thequestion until their heartrate had gone down again. Since everything hinged on answering

questions as quickly as possible, this was a lot more serious than it sounds. Eachcontestant got to face 6 questions. If it sounds complicated and bitty, that's because it

was, and it only lasted one series.

This is considerably longer than ITV's now notorious 'Shafted' lasted. 'Shafted' lasted forthe grand total of 4 shows before ITV pulled it from the schedules and shelved the

remaining episodes. The rules , such as they were , seemed complex and confusing. Therewas a general knowledge quiz involved somewhere,but there are only two things which

are remembered about the show. First is the ghastly orange hued presenter Robert Kilroy-

Silk's catchphrase - the excruciating " To share - or to shaft " and second is thedenouement of the show. Two remaining contestants would be faced with the amount of

money that had been won in the show. They would have a simple choice - to share or


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shaft. To share means that both of them would walk away with a share in the money. Ifone chose to shaft, while the other shared, the shafter would get the money. If both chose

to shaft, then neither would get the money. If that sounds familiar, then it should. Its the

same proceudre that was adopted for the end of Jasper Carrott's succesful game show"Golden Balls." Shafted did it first. At the time, the show was panned for being just toonasty. The horrible thought is that if the producers had just waited 5 years, they might

have had a hit on their hands.

The BBC have tried a variety of big quiz formats throughout the last decade, runningthem in conjunction with the National Lottery slot on a Saturday Evening. On the surface,

this would seem to be quite a sensible arrangement, as winning large amounts of cash fordoing little or nothing is exactly what the National Lottery is about. Yet a bewildering

array of different formats have come and gone, and none of them have really cemented

themselves in the nation's heart at all. The first, "Winning Lines" actually gave

contestants a wall full of answers, and dared them to find the right one quickly enough towin a big travel prize. "Come and Have A Go if You think You're Smart enough " pitted

teams in the studio against teams at home ( who usually won, since there would be as

many people as you liked in your team at home ). The People Versus pitted single

contestants against questions sent in by viewers. Surely the most overhyped, ambitiouslyconceived and ill carried out of all of these shows was 2007's The People's Quiz.

The People's Quiz was a combination of X-Factor style talent show with a 1990s daytime

TV quiz game show. The aim was to have 200700 people audition , for a chance of

winning the BBCs highest ever prize of 200,700. The show never attracted anything like

that many contestants. It took a long time to get onto the studio section. The auditions and

the studio shows were presided over three so-called 'quiz Gods'. These were the former15 to 1 presenter, William G. Stewart - how the Mighty are Fallen. Also present were thehighly decorative Myleene Klass, and Kate Garroway who was merely annoying. This

was not a succesful show, and no wonder, since it was such a mishmash of shows thatyou'd already seen before. Its unlikely that the BBC will offer such a large cash prize for

a quiz show again for a long time.

Not that the big money quiz show has died completely. ITV tried another format in 2008with Duel, which offered a top rpize of over 100,000. The gimmick behind this show

was that the two contestants playing against each other would be given ten chips to start.They had to use each of these to cover correct answers to questions. Each question had 4

possible answers. If the contestant wanted to cover all of the bases and cover 4 answersup, then they could, but then 3 chips of the 4 would be gone. As soon as a contestant

failed to cover a correct answer, they would be out. It was a good show, yet failed tocatch on, presumably because we, as an audience, have seen it all before.

So by the end of the first decade of the new milennium it seemed unlikely that there

would be another successful big budget TV quiz show, at least until something totally

different comes along. Yet this does not mean that the genre is dying on television.Rather, it is becoming niche programming. Quiz shows currently thrive in the teatime slot

between 5pm and 7pm. In part this began in the late 80s with 15 to 1, a programme that


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has been mourned by the quiz community ever since its passing in 2003. The BBC canpoint to two successes in this time slot; the afore mentioned The Weakest Link, and also

Eggheads. Eggheads, which actually began as a daytime show in 2004, had the novel idea

of having new teams of challengers every show facing a regular team. The catch is thatthe regular team are , and I quote 'some of the finest quiz brains in the UK' . Well, someof them undoubtedly are, although the show has faced criticism for having two Eggheads

whose knowledge is demonstrably less well developed than the other three. Four of thefive members of the challenging teams each face an Egghead in a head to head battle,

with each being given three multiple choice questions on a specific category. At the endof the three questions whoever has scored least, usually the challenger, is eliminated. If

there is a tie, then both face sudden death questions, without the multiple choice answers.Eggheads was the first show to exploit the idea of pitting everyday challengers against

members of the quizzing elite. Since then we have also seen a variation on this theme

with ITV's The Chase, which exploits the idea of ordinary members of the public

answering more questions correctly than the elite quizzer in order to take away themoney.

The truly intellectual quiz is not dead, either. In 2008 the satellite and cable channel

BBC4 launched Only Conect, a show which manages to be unashamedly intellectual, and

yet at the same time exciting and entertaining. As the title suggests, the name of the game

is to identify connections between seemingly unconnected clues. At the time of writing

this series seems to be as popular and respected amongst quizzers as university

Challenge, Mastermind and even 15 to 1 were in their heyday.

So, in conclusion, when one looks back at the history of the television quiz show in the

UK one is struck by how much has changed superficially, while so little has changedfundamentally. The basic structure of the quiz show, every quiz show, remainsunchanged. On a quiz show, contestants try to answer questions, with the hope of

winning prizes at the end of the show or series.Formats may change, and prizes maydiffer greatly , but this does not change. Long may it remain so.

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Rad 2 a Brief Potted History of the Quiz Show on British Television