A quiz channel (also known as a participation television channel) is a televisionchannel that focuses on phone-in quizzes. The quizzes usually focus on puzzles, such as filling in blanks, identifying subjects, or other forms of word puzzles. The channels make money by encouraging viewers to call a toll phone number for the chance to play.
The first dedicated quiz channel is considered to be Germany's 9Live, which launched on 1 September 2001. The best known example in the United Kingdom is Quiz TV (2004–2006), the first to launch in that country. Two major commercial television networks, ITV and Channel Four Television Corporation, through Ostrich Media launched ITV Play and Quiz Call respectively to capitalize on the phenomenon. There are a large amount of quiz channels, particularly on satellite television, with many clones of each other. They are most common at night, where many smaller channels close down and show the quiz channel content in return for a share of the revenue. Portugal also has a substantial amount of quiz programmes, especially on terrestrial channels (including public RTP), however in the daytime they are disguised as pimba-themed talk shows, with blatant phone-in cutaways and quiz participation.
Due to a number of incidents where the fairness of quiz channels and shows came to the attention of the media and regulators in the UK, a number of broadcasters have switched to other types of participation television, focusing primarily on roulette but also bingo[1] and other casino games[2] as well as branching out into other forms of participation television, such as televised sex lines.[3]
Scandals in Britain
Most of the major controversies involving participatory television have occurred in the United Kingdom, where these shows have been late-night staples on some channels.
Quiz channels have received large number of complaints due to use of premium-rate telephone numbers, "impossible" questions and gambling. Often it is far from clear how it is possible to reach the suggested 'right' answer. Some people who are heavily involved in the quiz industry in the UK have complained about the standard and ambiguity of the questions used on the programme. Questions in some games, as an example, Quizmania'stower games are usually very easy and open ended, often with scores of possible answers, but only a handful of which win prizes. This means that the competition becomes less of a quiz and more like a game of chance. A Culture, Media and Sports select committee report suggested that the odds of a viewer getting through to the studio is up to 8,500 to one[4] and for an ITV Play show, 400 to one.[5]
Some estimates suggest that phone-in quizzes generate around £50 million a year for broadcasters, making them a crucial source of income at a time of increasing pressure on advertising revenue.
Ofcom proposed to class participation TV channels in the same way as teleshopping channels. This would give consumers more protection against fraudulent channels.[6] According to an article in The Times, Ofcom was expected to receive an estimated 800 complaints about quiz channels in 2007, an increase from 450 in 2005.[7]
Culture, media and sport select committee hearing
On 28 November 2006, an all-party Culture, Media and Sport select committee held a hearing into the concerns regarding the way that quiz channels operate. The broadcasting minister, Shaun Woodward said that no action would be taken on any of the quiz channel operators until the parties had reported their findings. The Gambling commission said they would look into British Sky Broadcasting's concerns over quiz channels that quiz channels are a form of gambling and should be regulated.[8] Nick Rust from BSkyB, said to the committee that quiz channels should be considered gambling.[9] The committee heard evidence from Ofcom, the Citizens Advice Bureau, television executives and individuals.[7]
Points raised included the price of calls, whether the player got through or not. Jeff Henry, a director of ITV consumer said that one in four hundred players have a chance in getting through to The Mint programme. Henry also stated that by putting up details that there is a one in four hundred chance of winning, then "it would be out of date and we would be accused of misleading you."[9] Points also raised were the answers given for questions set, including an example from ITV Play programme Quizmania, where the obscure answers Rawlplugs and balaclava were given for a question on the contents of a woman's handbag, and examples of where callers were cut off from calling Quiz Call for forty minutes.[7] The commission was also told that viewers are encouraged to call in but are not told that they only have a 0.5% chance of getting through.[9]
Shari Vahl, from BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme told the committee that one woman had spent £1,500 on calls and suggested that programmes get 200 calls a minute, which makes getting through to the studio a slim chance.[9] However, producers and operators of quiz shows and channels have stated that only a small minority of people have a problem with being addicted to calling shows and channels.[9]
Report findings
On 25 January 2007, the select committee released its report into the participation television channel industry. The committee said that the channels should be classed as gambling and not a game of skill.[10]
The report made a few recommendations as to how the industry should be regulated. These include more transparency to viewers on the odds of getting through to the studio, including a recommendation of the odds of getting through being shown by an on-screen graphic.[5] The report also said that questions should be verified by a third party before they can be broadcast.[10]
BIG Game TV!
BIG Game TV! was the subject of a City of London Police investigation brought by the BBC Radio 4 programme You and Yours in May 2006 over allegations that receptionists were told to ignore all incoming calls for long periods of time while 150-200 calls per minute were charged 75p a time.[11]NTL subsequently removed the channel from their channel line-up on the 7th of June.[12]
The City of London Police said there would be no charges brought against the channel, following its investigation.[citation needed]
British Sky Broadcasting – Quiz channels move on Sky Digital EPG
British Sky Broadcasting made an attempt to counter the problems somewhat by moving the EPG numbers of the channels on its Sky Digital service to the 840's section under the heading of "Gaming and Dating". Many of the quiz channels got around this by broadcasting on other channels, notably the general entertainment channels.
Gambling Commission Participation TV consultation
By law, only charities and Camelot are allowed to run lotteries. Any prize competitions in newspapers, magazines and television shows have to be "games of skill". In an effort to crack down on unofficial lotteries the Government is[when?] insisting that television phone-in quizzes become harder since it claims they are otherwise games of chance.
In August 2006, the Gambling Commission in the United Kingdom started a consultation regarding the way that participation television operate. The consultation is designed to clear up the confusion between prize competitions, free draws and lotteries, ahead of the Gambling Act 2005, which came into force in September 2007. If the consultation shows that participation TV shows and channels operate more like lotteries rather than games of skill, they could be required by law to give 20% of their revenue to charity.[13][14][15]
Under the new Gambling Act, the Gambling Commission will have the power to prosecute broadcasters if it believes they are persistently flouting the law by running illegal lotteries. "There are already rules, but what the Gambling Act does is introduce a better definition so that the rules are enforceable", said a spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. "At the moment the rules are not clear enough to prevent these kinds of quizzes where the questions are ridiculously easy in order to maximise the number of entrants".
ICSTIS
The United Kingdom premium phone regulator, ICSTIS has reported an increase in complaints about quiz shows and channels. A BBC News article stated that "nearly 10% of all enquiries about premium rate services received by ICSTIS between September and November last year were specifically regarding television contests".
On October 10, 2006, ICSTIS announced that it would be investigating participation television channels after complaints it received from the public into concerns that players are paying too much to enter the quizzes by phone. ICSTIS also said that it wanted callers to know how much each call would cost them and the odds of winning any prize. ICSTIS raised concern that players were unaware that they would be charged for each call regardless of whether the player got through to the studio or not.[16]
On March 9, 2007 in the wake of a number of technical problems and controversies over premium rate phone-ins on television shows and quiz channels, ICSTIS warned television companies that any illegal operating would be investigated by the police.[17] ICSTIS also announced measures to bring in licensing to restore public confidence in competitions.
ITV Play
Criticisms about Quizmania, The Mint and other, similar phone-in quiz shows and television channels have been levelled by various groups of people.
Some people who are heavily involved in the quiz industry in the UK have complained about the standard and ambiguity of the questions used on the programme. Questions in the tower games (see above) are usually very easy and open ended, often with scores of possible answers, but only a handful of which win prizes. This means that the competition becomes less of a quiz and more like a game of chance.
Organisations such as the Gambling Commission[18] have expressed concerns that Quizmania and similar programmes encourage gambling. HM Treasury began an examination of the regulations surrounding phone-in quiz shows. Phone-in game shows are scrutinised by Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator and ICSTIS, who regulate premium rate phone numbers in the UK; both organisations have received complaints from viewers about phone-in game shows.
An article on the BBC website noted that "ICSTIS - the organisation that regulates premium rate telephone services in the UK - had acknowledged that the growth in the number of puzzle channels has been "matched by an increase in complaints about them".
According to this article, "nearly 10% of all enquiries about premium rate services received by Icstis between September and November last year were specifically regarding television contests".
Despite the criticisms, Quizmania became the first live and interactive quizshow to broadcast on analogue terrestrial television.
In a Sunday Times article published on 24 September, Quiz Call admitted that it had taken calls at 75p a call without any chance of the callers getting through for a chance to win and Quiz Call apologised for using its own staff members to pose as winners. Channel 4 have since sold off Quiz Call due to increasing levels of bad reputation from the channel.[6]
In the Culture, Media and Sport committee held on 28 November 2006 representatives from Quiz Call admitted that one instance of people being put on hold did occur and that the producer responsible no longer works for Ostrich Media.
2007 television phone-in scandals
In 2007, a series of scandals broke out involving allegations of phone-in segments of television programmes and quiz channels conning viewers.[19]
Richard & Judy on Channel 4 were accused of encouraging viewers to enter the 'You Say We Pay' segment after the winner had been picked.[20] The competition was indefinitely suspended soon afterwards[19] and was later cancelled permanently. Channel 4 Racing was also affected after a software glitch allowed callers to enter a competition even though the competition had ended.[21]
ITV suspended all programmes involving premium rate phone-ins on 5 March 2007, including its quiz channel ITV Play.[22] This was to allow independent auditorDeloitte to conduct a review of the fairness of revenue-generating phone-ins in programmes carried by ITV including Dancing on Ice and The X Factor.[23] ITV Play was taken off the air during the review, but for a few days it ran a limited after midnight service for only four hours before on 13 March, ITV announced that ITV Play had been permanently closed down.[24]
Five followed suit when they were alleged to have displayed the name of a fictional winner on BrainTeaser after they failed to find a genuine winner.[25] Five was later fined £300,000 by Ofcom; the highest ever amount from the broadcasting watchdog.
The BBC was also affected by these scandals. Saturday Kitchen on BBC One were accused of encouraging viewers to phone in to a pre-recorded programme.[26] On 14 March 2007 the BBC children's programme Blue Peter was revealed to have used a girl who was visiting the studio to pose as a caller live on the show.[27] The BBC stated that a technical error prevented 14,000 callers from getting a chance to win in the competition.[28]Konnie Huq apologised over the phone-in problem on the 14 March broadcast of the show.[27]
On 20 March 2007 it was revealed that 11,500 votes for the Dancing on Ice final three days earlier on ITV were lost as they were not delivered to Vodafone until the following Monday morning. On 23 April 2007, a BBCPanorama investigation disclosed that callers to GMTV's phone-in competitions may have been defrauded out of millions of pounds, because the telephone system operator, Opera Interactive Technology, had determined the winners before the phone lines had closed. GMTV responded by suspending the phone-in quizzes, but claimed that "it was confident it had not breached regulators' codes". Opera Interactive also denied any wrongdoing.[29]
The BBC suspended all phone-in competitions indefinitely on 18 July 2007, after further revelations about faked competition winners, including incidents during the charity broadcasts Comic Relief and Children in Need.[30]
Newspapers reported on 26 July 2007 that ITV's broadcast of the 2005 British Comedy Awards had also been conning viewers.[31]
ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network that is branded as ITV1 in most of the UK except for central and northern Scotland where it is branded as STV. It was launched in 1955 as Independent Television to provide competition and reduce the current monopoly to the then BBC Television. ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK. Since the passing of the Broadcasting Act 1990, it has been legally known as Channel 3 to distinguish it from the other analogue channels at the time: BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4.
Richard and Judy is the name informally given to Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, a British married couple who are both television presenters and columnists. They presented the daytime television programme This Morning from 1988 until 2001, and then hosted the daily chat show Richard & Judy from 2001 until 2009.
Judith Adele Finnigan is an English television presenter and writer. She co-presented ITV's This Morning and the Channel 4 chat show, Richard & Judy (2001–2008) alongside her husband Richard Madeley. Her debut novel Eloise, published in 2012, was a Sunday Times bestseller. Her second novel, I Do Not Sleep, was published in 2015.
GMTV, now legally known as ITV Breakfast Broadcasting Limited, was the name of the national Channel 3 breakfast television contractor/licensee, broadcasting in the United Kingdom from 1 January 1993 to 3 September 2010. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of ITV plc in November 2009. Shortly after, ITV plc announced the programme would end. The final edition of GMTV was broadcast on 3 September 2010.
Richard & Judy was a British television chat show presented by the married couple Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. The show originally aired on Channel 4 from 26 November 2001 to 22 August 2008, but later moved to digital channel Watch from 7 October 2008 to 1 July 2009.
ITV Nightscreen is a scheduled programme on the ITV television network, consisting of a sequence of animated pages of information about ITV's upcoming programmes, features and special events, with easy listening music in the background. The programme was used to fill the station's overnight downtime, where a closedown would have once been used at the end of programmes. The programme was generally shown seven days a week with the typical weekday show airing from 4:05am to 5:05am daily. However, on ITV's digital channels, the amount of Teleshopping affects how much Nightscreen is broadcast. The programme was also broadcast on all of ITV's +1 channels.
BrainTeaser was a British game show based on the original Dutch format of Puzzeltijd. The show was broadcast live, with phone-in viewer puzzles being announced and played during the show in addition to the studio game. During its run from 5 August 2002 to 7 March 2007, it aired on Five Mondays to Fridays, usually for an hour around lunchtime, and was fronted by various presenters rotating with one another. Beginning in August 2005, a version of the show that exclusively focused on viewer participation was broadcast in a four-hour long block on YooPlay TV every day after the Five broadcast, as part of a thirteen-week trial.
Quiz Call was a TV quiz channel. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom and owned by Ostrich Media. It was also a late night / early morning phone-in quiz TV show, produced by Ostrich Media and broadcast on Five, Five US / Five USA, Five Life and Ftn.
The Up-Late Game Show was a late night interactive television quiz program shown in Australia on Network Ten, written and hosted by Big Brother Australia 2005 contestant Simon Deering, commonly known by the nickname Hotdogs. The show's format had the host presenting simple puzzles which viewers could attempt to solve over the phone. Successfully solving a puzzle would result in a cash prize for the contestant.
Advertiser-funded programming (AFP) is a recent term applied to a break away from the modern model of television funding in place since the early 1960s. Since that time, programmes have normally been funded by a broadcaster and they re-couped the money through selling advertising space around the content. This has worked fine for decades, but new technological advances have forced broadcasters and advertisers to re-think their relationship.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a British television quiz show, created by David Briggs, Steven Knight & Mike Whitehill for ITV. The programme's format sees contestants taking on multiple-choice questions based upon general knowledge, winning a cash prize for each question they answer correctly, with the amount offered increasing as they take on more difficult questions. If an incorrect answer is given, the contestant will leave with whatever cash prize is guaranteed by the last safety net they have passed, unless they opt to walk away before answering the next question with the money the cash prize they had managed to reach. To assist in the quiz, contestants are given a series of "lifelines" to help answer questions.
ITV Play was a short-lived 24/7 participation television channel in the United Kingdom owned by ITV plc. The ITV Play name continued as a strand on the main ITV Network until December 2007.
The Mint was a live, late night, interactive quiz show with celebrity guests and live studio contestants filmed on a large extravagant set designed to look like the inside of a mansion. The programme, which was dogged by criticism that its questions were ambiguous and arbitrary, aired on ITV and ITV2, Sunday to Wednesday. On 26 February 2007, ITV announced that The Mint would return to screens later in 2007, however an announcement on 12 September 2007 confirmed that the show, along with similar late night phone ins, would not be returning.
Quizmania is an Australian phone-in quiz show, based on the British program of the same name, and broadcast on the Nine Network in the late night time slot (post-midnight). The show was produced from Nine's Richmond studios in Melbourne. Its main Director was Rick Maslan.
Bingo Night Live is an interactive television programme featuring a free-to-play bingo game, broadcast in the United Kingdom on ITV. It aired between 4 June 2008 and 29 November 2008.
Quizmania is a British interactive game show. The show was devised by Chuck Thomas, Debbie King, and Simone Thorogood and produced by FremantleMedia for Information TV and ITV. Similar to other premium-line call-in shows, viewers on the TV version of Quizmania were encouraged to phone a premium-rate number in order to provide an answer to a quiz question.
The Daily Quiz! was a live, phone-in quiz channel, previously a TV programme, which was showing on ITV Play and also on Men & Motors from 3pm-6pm seven days a week. Two presenters were in the studio simultaneously and took it in turns to answer calls, the second presenter waits by the jackpot board or front desk and is brought in every so often to chat. The Daily Quiz! had a newspaper/gossip theme running throughout the show and at regular intervals, the presenters sat at their desk, related celebrity news stories from the day's papers and discussed them in a light-hearted manner. Viewers could win up to £5000 in the jackpot game.
This is a timeline of the history of the British television network ITV.
Adult chat television channels and programs are a format of phone-in live television programming that has developed in Europe since 2002, often having elements similar to webcam modelling and softcore pornography.
The 2007 British premium-rate phone-in scandal, sometimes referred to in the press as simply the phone-in scandal relates to a series of controversies regarding the use of premium-rate telephone numbers by several British television and radio broadcasters. The first revelations began in February 2007, regarding the Channel 4 television programme Richard & Judy. However, over the following weeks, more allegations emerged regarding misconduct by major British broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. The programmes affected included phone-in competitions and public votes conducted over a period of several years, dating back to 2001. As a result, adjudicators Ofcom and ICSTIS conducted several investigations, resulting in millions of pounds worth of fines and a reform in the use of PRS by broadcasters.
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