News Archive

Old news stories are archived here. See the main page for the latest news.

2007

8 October Ladies please!
Mastermind is to advertise for contenders in women's magazines in an effort to encourage more female applicants, reports MediaGuardian. At present only a quarter of applicants are female, and no woman has won the title since Anne Ashurst in 1997. Applications (regardless of gender) can be made through the Mastermind website.

1 October Ned Sherrin
Ned Sherrin, the original and long-serving host of Counterpoint, has died of complications from throat cancer. He was 76.

26 September GMTV fined
GMTV has been fined £2m by Ofcom over its use of premium-rate phone-in competitions between May 2003 and April 2007, during which time around 18 million calls were placed which were disreagrded as winners had been selected early on. Ofcom ruled that GMTV had been "both irresponsible and negligent" in its relationship with operator Opera Telecom and had not done enough to ensure compliance with Ofcom codes of practice. The fine equals the largest ever handed down by Ofcom.

24 September Telecoms company fined over GMTV competitions
Opera Telecom, the former phone operator for GMTV competitions, has been fined a record £250,000 by the premium rate regulator, ICSTIS. The regulator found that over four years, more than 18 million calls were made to GMTV competitions that had no chance of winning. The fine is the largest ever imposed by ICSTIS in its 21-year history.

13 September Strictly Mr & Mrs
Gabby Logan and her husband, former rugby international Kenny Logan, are to be the first married celebrity couple to compete against each other in Strictly Come Dancing when the show returns next month. Gabby was barred from competing in the 2006 series because she was then under exclusive contract to ITV. Other celebs appearing this year include Kate Garraway, Kelly Brook and John Barnes. The line-up of professional dancers is unchanged from last year. (Full list)

12 September 50/50
Who Wants to be a Millionaire? bosses have created a spin-off show based on the 50/50 lifeline. Called 50/50, surprisingly enough, the quiz will see pairs of contestants competing for big cash prizes by accepting or rejecting alternative answers to questions, but quite what that means is still unclear. (The Sun)

12 September Game over for ITV Play
ITVplc has announced that its phone-in quiz programming on ITV1 + ITV2 is to be axed by the end of the year. The company's executive chairman, Michael Grade, announced the decision to end Glitterball and Make Your Play this morning saying that the recent TV phone-in scandal had decreased call volumes to 'uneconomic levels'. Earlier this year, a dedicated ITV Play channel was closed down in what the broadcaster described as a 'commerical move'. (Digital Spy)

3 September No shocks at TV Quick awards
Winners at last night's TV Quick Awards included I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! as Best Reality Show and The X Factor as Best Talent Show. The award for Best Entertainment Show was won by Saturday Night Takeaway.

31 August "This is so men'al"
Brian Belo, who famously said he did not know who William Shakespeare was, and told Davina he was a director who made Romeo and Juliet, has won the eighth series of Big Brother ahead of twins Amanda and Sam, Liam and Ziggy. (BBC)

31 August Boyle goes Bollywood
Trainspotting director Danny Boyle is to base his forthcoming movie on the Indian version of hit TV quiz show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? Based on a true story, Slumdog Millionaire, will shoot in Mumbai from a script by fellow Briton Simon Beaufoy, who penned The Full Monty. (BBC)

24 August EXCLUSIVE: Scrapheap scrapped
Celebrity Big Brother is to be rested, and Scrapheap Challenge axed in a major shakeup of Channel 4 programming. Celeb BB will not run next year, in order to free up the 9pm weeknight slot for new commissions, though a "very different" BB spin-off will air on E4 only. Scrapheap Challenge will end after its 2008 series, which has already been recorded.

13 August 12 question money tree on WWTBAM
Jon Culshaw and John Thomson will be the first people to face the new-look Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The prize money will now start at £500, not £100, and it will only take 12 correct answers to win the top prize. It will only take two questions to reach the first safe haven at £1,000. The second rises in value from £32,000 to £50,000, and is achieved after seven correct answers. (BBC)

13 August Merv Griffin
Merv Griffin, the devisor of game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, has died at the age of 82. The US entertainer, best known for his eponymous talk show which ran from 1965 to 1986, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer for a second time earlier this year.

10 August Tony Wilson
Maverick music mogul, veteran news anchor and sometime game show host Anthony H. Wilson has died at the age of 57. Wilson was diagnosed with renal cancer last year but his condition was said to have been responding well to treatment.

9 August Gcap forgoes phone profits
Gcap, the radio giant which runs Capital and BMRB, as well as Classic FM and Capital Gold, is the latest broadcaster to drop profit-making phone-ins. The move comes after phone operator MX Telecom was fined £17,500 over irregularities in Gcap's "Secret Sounds" competition broadcast across 31 local stations in its "One Network". Gcap will continue to use premium-rate services but will not take a profit from them.

9 August Fine over DoND phone-in
iTouch, the telephone operator for Deal or No Deal's phone-in contest, has been fined £30,000 by ICSTIS because the programme gave the impression that viewers could win any one of the three prizes on offer. In fact because the show is pre-recorded, producers knew which prize would be available before the lines opened. Though imposing a fine for a breach of its code of practice, ICSTIS' ruling stated that "the detriment to consumers from this specific breach was not high".

6 August Millionaire moves to audition model
In an attempt to refresh the show ahead of its tenth anniversary (or to put it another way, stop boring people getting on screen), Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is to begin holding auditions for prospective contestants. The premium-rate application line will remain, but will be joined by a free web entry route. Auditions are already held in some countries where the WWTBAM format has been licensed.

1 August Channel 4 scraps almost all phone-ins
In what it describes as "a tough new policy", Channel 4 has announced that it will no longer include profit-making phone-in competitions in its shows, with the exception of Big Brother and Deal or No Deal, from which Channel 4's profits will go to charity. The announcement follows the discovery that between September 2004 and March 2007, a total of 2.9 million calls were entered to Richard & Judy's "You Say, We Pay" competition which had no chance of winning because the shortlist had already been finalised soon after lines opened.

30 July Phil Drabble
Phil Drabble, the original and longest-serving host of One Man and His Dog, has died at the age of 93. Drabble, who fronted the programme from 1976 to 1993, died peacefully at his Staffordshire home on Sunday.

29 July Mike Reid
The death has been announced of comedian and actor Mike Reid at the age of 67. Latterly famous for his role as Frank Butcher in EastEnders, Reid was also the sometime host of Runaround and recently competed in a celeb reality show, The Baron, which was due to air next month on ITV1.

27 July Give a Few Bob
Game show legend Bob Monkhouse returns to our screens four years after his death. With full support of the Monkhouse family, amazing computer graphics and body doubles have been used in conjunction with archive footage to produce an amazingly lifelike advert featuring Bob asking the public to donate money to prostate cancer research, the illness which took Monkhouse's life. Watch the advert here

25 July GMTV MD resigns
Paul Corley, the managing director of GMTV, has announced his resignation over the mishandling of phone-in competitions on the station. GMTV will offer a series of free draws with a total prize fund of 2.5 million pounds and will also change the way that competitions are run in future. Mr. Corley says that he hopes his resignation and this series of initatives will help restore 'viewer trust' in the station. (BBC)

18 July All BBC competitions suspended
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson has announced that all BBC phone-in competitions will be suspended from midnight tonight (Wednesday) and that online and interactive competitions will be suspended "as soon as possible". The measures come after an internal enquiry at the BBC uncovered five previously unknown instances of competition results being faked, including phone-ins during the Sport Relief, Comic Relief and Children in Need telethons.

11 July Holmes flop is new lottery vehicle
Nick Knowles is to host a new BBC One lottery tie-in this autumn. The 12 Yard show, Who Dares Wins, is a renamed version of The Rich List, a format which was billed as Eamonn Holmes' bid to crack America, but which was pulled from US TV schedules after just one episode. The show had previously been piloted and rejected by ITV. The format has, however, been a hit in Australia.

6 July Richard and Judy phone quiz thievery
A fine of £150,000 is to be levied on the phone company involved in the Richard & Judy phone quiz fraud. You Say We Pay began shortly after Richard & Judy went on air at 5pm and ended at 5.38pm, with the competition being won at 5.42pm. On most days a shortlist of 24 possible winners was drawn up as early as 5.11pm, and sent by Eckoh to Cactus Television. (Times)

27 June Tycoon toppled from Tuesdays
ITV has pulled its much-hyped business reality series Tycoon from Tuesday nights after the show failed to improve on its first-week ratings. Only 1.8 million people saw the second episode, a 9% share of viewing. The one-hour episodes will be re-edited to half an hour to fit a 10pm slot on Mondays and it is likely that the live final, originally scheduled for 24 July, will be put back.

26 June er Bra | e fin | Fiv | inte | ed ov | aser
OFCOM has imposed a record £300,000 fine on Five in respect of a series of incidents during the first three months of this year in which Brainteaser faked the results of on-air competitions. According to the ruling, the incidents "should be seen against a background of serious and longstanding compliance failures" dating back to 2003. Five will also have to broadcast apologies both in the show's old slot and in primetime.

26 June Highbrow reality series for BBC2 autumn line-up
BBC2's autumn line-up, announced today, includes two major new reality shows. Classical Star will seek a young musician to be awarded a recording contract with a major classical label, while The Restaurant challenges nine couples to run an eaterie with the winners receiving backing from Raymond Blanc. Dragons' Den will also return for a fifth series.

23 June People's Quiz pays out
Stephanie Bruce, a chemist and self-styled "Essex girl" resident in Haverhill, Suffolk has been named the People's Quiz champion after beating Mark Labbett in the final head-to-head round. Her £200,700 prize is the most ever paid out by a BBC show.

22 July Walsh gets job back
Louis Walsh has confirmed that he is back in The X Factor fold for the next series. Walsh had previously been dropped from the line-up but will return to replace "new judge" Brian Friedman, who has quit the panel but will be given a new role on the show.

15 June Dragons' Den
Entrepreneur James Caan has been confirmed as the new Dragon in the Den. Caan, founder of HR firm The Alexander Mann Group, will replace Richard Farleigh when the fifth series goes into production this summer.

14 June The Great Pretender
Chris Tarrant is taking on Deal or No Deal host Noel Edmonds by fronting a weekday tea-time quiz. The Who Wants to be a Millionaire? star, 60, has signed up for an ITV show in which players bluff each other to win. (The Sun)

13 June Bloody old fool that I am, I'm going to take that risk
Simon Ambrose has won The Apprentice, beating Kristina Grimes to the £100,000-a-year job with Sir Alan Sugar. The pair's final showdown saw them compete to win over architects and property developers with a design for a building on the South Bank. Kristina's property design was said to resemble Fascist architecture which was later changed. (BBC)

13 June Sir David Hatch
The death has been announced of former BBC Managing Director of Radio, David Hatch. He was co-creator of the long-running comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and host of Wireless Wise, as well as commissioner of countless other radio shows. (BBC)

12 June Katie, you're fired
Katie Hopkins, a former candidate on BBC's The Apprentice, has been fired from her 'real job' (a brand manager for the Met Office) as she failed to pass her probationary term. The final, between Simon Ambrose and Kristina Grimes takes place on Wednesday 13th June at 21:00 on BBC1. (BBC)

8 June Brainteaser compensation sought
Five is reported to be claiming compensation from Endemol for loss of revenue following the sudden axing of Brainteaser in March this year. The show, made by Endemol's Cheetah West subsidiary, was pulled after it was discovered that some of the on-air winning "callers" to the show were in fact members of the production staff.

7 June The 'n' word is clearly offensive
Emily Parr has been removed from the Big Brother house for using a racially offensive word to Charley Uchea, while they were dancing in the living room on Wednesday evening. The eviction vote, in which Emily was nominated along with Shabnam Paryani, has been suspended. (BBC)

7 June Grand Slam goes to U.S.
Winners from American shows including Jeopardy! (Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter), Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (Kevin Olmstead and John Carpenter), Wheel of Fortune, Tic Tac Dough, Lingo and The Weakest Link are scheduled to compete for $100,000 in the U.S. version of the 2003 quiz. The show will be hosted by Dennis Miller with Amanda Byram and broadcast on Game Show Network from 8 Aug. (TV Guide)

4 June X Factor appointments
Singer Dannii Minogue and choreographer Brian Friedman are the new judges on The X Factor. Their appointment follows Louis Walsh's departure from the show.

3 June Manford's the man for Cats
Stand-up comic Jason Manford is to join the regular cast of 8 Out of 10 Cats. He will replace Dave Spikey as team captain when the fifth series begins on 15 June.

30 May Hancock returns
Nick Hancock has been announced as the host of new Channel 4 daytime show Win My Wage, which will air in Deal or No Deal's slot this summer. It will be his first regular hosting role on national TV since leaving They Think it's All Over in 2004.

29 May The Big Donor Show
Big Brother maker Endemol is said to be going ahead with a new reality TV programme called De Grote Donorshow (The Big Donor Show) to be screened on Dutch TV station BNN this Friday, in which viewers vote on who will recieve the kidney of a terminally ill woman. (BBC). (Update 1 June: It was a hoax.) For more information on organ donation, visit: www.uktransplant.org.uk

24 May OFCOM adjudication: CBB broke broadcasting rules
An OFCOM investigation has found that Channel 4's 2007 series of Celebrity Big Brother was in breach of the Broadcasting Code. The report says that a serious failure of the compliance process led to serious editorial misjudgements. Channel 4 and S4C (also affected by OFCOM's actions) will broadcast a summary of the findings after the first show of the new series next week. Repeat summaries will be shown after a revised repeat and the first eviction. (OFCOM adjudication)

20 May BAFTA Winners
The sole game show winner from this year's BAFTA TV awards was The X Factor as Best Entertainment Programme out of about half a dozen game show nominations. If you count Numberwang from That Mitchell and Webb Look (winner of Best Comedy Programme), there are two winning game shows!

18 May Dragon dropped
Australian investor Richard Farleigh has been dropped from the next series of Dragons' Den. Farleigh said he was "gutted" not to be invited to take part after appearing in the previous two series. His replacement has not yet been named.

18 May MGEITF
The MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival has announced some of the confirmed speakers for this year's event, including Jeremy Paxman, who will deliver the MacTaggart Lecture and host a one-off live edition of University Challenge. Channel 4's chief executive, Andy Duncan, will take part in a major session, including discussion of the Big Brother controversy. (WorldScreen)

17 May Quiz scandal hits ITV profits
In a statement for its annual general meeting the broadcaster confirmed that its premium rate telephone services revenue dropped by around 20 per cent in March and April amid scandals involving GMTV and The X Factor. Ad revenues for the first half of 2007 at ITV1 are down 9.6 per cent against last year, while ITV's total take from advertising is down 5.7 per cent. (InTheNews)

13 Apr Are You Smarter?
Sky One has bought the rights to the phenomenally successful US game show - Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader. It will be renamed Are You Smarter Than a 10-Year-Old? (BBC)

11 Apr BAFTA Nominations
The nominees for this year's BAFTA TV awards have been announced. Dancing on Ice, Maria? and The X Factor go up against Derren Brown's The Heist for Best Entertainment Programme, while Stephen Fry, Ant 'n' Dec, Paul Merton and Jonathan Ross face off in the Best Entertainment Performance category, and The Apprentice and Dragons' Den are up against The Choir and Gordon Ramsay's The F Word for Best Features. Dragons' Den and Celeb BB are shortlisted for the Pioneer Audience Award but stand no chance against Life On Mars. Finally Numberwang, or at any rate That Mitchell and Webb Look, is up for Best Comedy. The winners will be announced on 20 May.

4 Apr Brucie's Back!
The Generation Game is making a comeback later this year as part of UKTV Gold's £10 million new programming strategy, with UKGameshows.com's top host of all time (as voted by readers) Bruce Forsyth at the helm. (DS)

30 Mar O'Leary has X Factor
Dermot O'Leary has been confirmed as the new host of The X Factor, replacing the ousted Kate Thornton. The hit ITV talent show will return in the autumn.

13 Mar ITV Play channel closes down for good
The controversial ITV Play channel has ceased transmission permanently after just under a year on air. Overnight broadcasts, which currently include Glitterball and Make Your Play will continue on ITV1 + ITV2. (ITN, BBC)

5 Mar ITV suspends premium rate phone-ins
ITV has admitted a mistake when a vote on The X Factor led to viewers being overcharged by £200,000. There have also been complaints regarding Richard and Judy and Big Brother on Channel 4. (BBC, BBC)

3 Mar Dominic wins £1m
Dominic Jackson beat Colin Lynch in the final to scoop the jackpot on the second series of PokerFace and go into 12th place in the UK game shows All Time Winners List. Congratulations to him!

22 Feb You Say We Don't Pay refund line
For people ripped off by Richard & Judy, the refund line is 0800 666 805. The line will be open until the investigation is complete. (C4, BBC)

8 Feb Two new ITV game shows
Two shows from Endemol-owned Initial have been commissioned by ITV: For the Rest of Your Life by Deal or No Deal creator Dick de Rijk gives couples the chance to win a pay cheque every month of every year for the rest of their lives; and Golden Balls are due to air in the Spring.

12 Jan Match burnt out
Sky One have confirmed that their longest-running game show format, The Match, has been axed. The celebrity football show ran for three series, but failed to produce a team capable of beating a squad of ex-professionals. Sky has said it is seeking a new football-based reality format.

7 Jan Deal jackpot won
Laura Pearce, a civilian police worker from Hemel Hempstead, has become the first person to win the £250,000 jackpot on Deal or No Deal. It is the biggest prize ever given away on daytime television in the UK.

7 Jan Magnus Magnusson dies
Former Mastermind presenter Magnus Magnusson dies of cancer at the age of 77. (BBC)

5 Jan ITV1 seeks tycoons
The first fruit of ITV1's deal with Dragons' Den investor Peter Jones has been announced. Tycoon will see Jones mentoring would-be entrepreneurs and is likely to air this summer. Applications can be made via the ITV website from Saturday.

1 Jan Return of the King
It has been confirmed that School's Out will be returning for a second, eight-part, series, to be filmed in February. King Danny of Lovely will again host the show, which is made by Graham Norton's So Television.

2006

30 Dec A gong for Sarpong
June Sarpong is an unexpected inclusion on the 2007 new year honours list, becoming an MBE for her broadcasting and charity work. Penelope Keith is made a CBE, though it is unlikely that her stint as host of What's My Line? had much bearing on the award.

26 Dec Grand Cram
The first-round questions for the forthcoming National Lottery People's Quiz have been published online, together with details of the five open auditions for the show. The guaranteed jackpot is £200,700, more than double the previous highest prize awarded on a BBC show. People's Quiz website.

23 Dec Big Game TV
Fraud charges against Big Game TV have been dropped after a six-month investigation found no evidence of criminality. However, the channel may still face regulatory action from OFCOM.

7 November Another Des
Des O'Connor is said to have won the race to replace Des Lynam as host of Countdown. Des, aged 74, is said to still be in negotiations but reports are confident he has been given the job. Channel 4 is thought to have offered him a contract worth £500,000. His first episodes would be broadcast in January 2007. Other contenders Michael Aspel, Alan Titchmarsh, Stephen Fry and Paul Merton are said to have pulled out of the race due to work commitments.

1 November National Television Awards
The winners have been announced of the ITV-sponsored National Television Awards. Ant and Dec won Most Popular Entertainment Presenter, while Gameshow Marathon was voted top game show, ending Millionaire's seven-year winning streak. Deal or No Deal took the Most Popular Daytime Show title, Big Brother was Most Popular Reality Programme (and BB7's Nikki Grahame was named Most Popular TV Contender) and Most Popular Entertainment Programme was The X Factor.

30 October New Faces discovery
A 1973 episode of New Faces previously believed to have been lost has been rediscovered by director Paul Stewart Laing. The episode includes the first TV appearance of Victoria Wood, who went on to win the series. Including this new discovery, only 18 out of the 160 episodes produced in the 1970s are known to have survived.

12 October Magnus Magnusson diagnosed with cancer
Former Mastermind presenter Magnus Magnusson has been diagnosed with cancer. He has cancelled a number of public appearances, including a talk at the Cheltenham Literature Festival to mark his 77th birthday. (BBC)

5 October BB vote rapped
The premium rate watchdog ICSTIS has ruled that Channel 4 "misled" viewers and broke its own guidelines when it invited Big Brother viewers to vote to evict housemates who were subsequently reinstated. ISCTIS received over 2600 complaints about the matter. C4 avoided a fine, but have been ordered to pay the costs of the investigation.

30 September Lynam quits
Des Lynam has announced that he is to leave Countdown at the end of the present series, citing the inconvenience of travel between his West Sussex home and Yorkshire TV's studios in Leeds. No decision has yet been announced on who will take over as host.

16 September Ingram wins the jackpot
Ingram Wilcox's win on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? puts him in at position 10 on the All Time Winners List. His final question was "Which boxer was famous for striking the gong in the introduction to J. Arthur Rank films?" A: Bombardier Billy Wells, B: Freddie Mills, C: Terry Spinks, D: Don Cockell.

18 October NTA Award noms
The shortlists have been announced for the ITV-sponsored National Television Awards, to be handed out on 31 October. The major game show categories are Most Popular Game Show (Cats, Marathon, News, Millionaire), Entertainment Programme (Takeaway, Strictly, Dancing on Ice, The X Factor and non-gameshow Friday Night with Jonathan Ross) and Reality Programme (BB7, Celeb BB4, I'm a Celeb 4 and Apprentice 2). Deal or No Deal is up for Most Popular Daytime Programme, Bad Lads Army is nominated for Most Popular Factual, and there is a new "TV Contender" category featuring contestants from BB, Celeb BB, I'm a Celeb and Soapstar Superstar. The Most Popular Entertainment Presenter noms are Ant and Dec, Noel, Davina, Paul O'Grady and perpetual winner in this category, Jonathan Ross. You can vote if you wish at nta.itv.com.

6 September Anne Gregg
The death has been announced of the presenter Anne Gregg. Best-known for presenting the Holiday programme, she also hosted the short-lived Holiday Quiz spin-off and was a regular panellist on the antiques quiz Going, Going, Gone. Gregg was 66 and had been ill with cancer.

5 September Noel's mystery solved
The mystery of the symbols on Noel Edmonds' hand when filming Deal or No Deal has been solved. Far from being an object lesson in cosmic ordering, as many had thought, in fact the final messages spelt out "www", "red", "box" and "club" pointing to this website. If you can solve the hidden message of the code you can win a VIP trip to the DoND studios including a chance to meet Noel and be one of the blue box openers.

5 September Award season again, so soon
The TV Quick Awards were handed out last night. Deal or No Deal added the "Best Daytime Show" award to its already strained trophy cabinet, while the usual suspects also picked up gongs: I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! won "Best Reality Show" for the fourth year running, and Strictly Come Dancing took "Best Entertainment Programme" for the second year on the trot (so to speak).