Conventions – Game Shows

Game Shows

Live Studio audience – instant reaction

Prizes – preferably life altering

Fixed Formula

Fixed opening and closing

Fixed Sets - economical

No rehearsals

Free “performers” – 15 minutes of fame

Winners and Losers

No Researchers

Personality Host – Think Jasper Carrot, Anne Robinson etc

“Ordinary” People

Mass Production – film 3 in one day

Daytime Television

• Competing for an audience of about 8 million (afternoon telly)

• Adverts clearly aimed at a select audience (the retired/ housewives)

• Selective practices – terrific images (good or bad) makes good telly. Emphasis of the selective nature of representation as well as the constructive nature of representation. Has an underlying ideology.

Things to consider

1) “It Could Be You” – campaign for the National Lottery (Anyone can be a winner – or can they?)2) “There is an 18 year difference in life

expectancy in Sheffield depending whether you live in a “good” or “bad” area” (Today programme, November 2009)

3) The first million pound winner on Who wants to be a Millionaire? Was Judith Keppel, whose aristocratic credentials link her to the Duchess of Cornwall but who described herself as a “housewife”

Things to consider4) When Fred Housego, a London cabbie, won Mastermind his second claim to fame was that he was a ‘mere’ taxi driver.5) “As general inequality has increased, so has inequality of educational opportunity” (Deborah Orr, The Guardian, November 2009)6) “Cultural capital, like economic capital, is presented as being equally available to all, but is actually confined to those with class power” (John Fiske, writing about quiz shows, 1987)

Cultural Differences versus Anyone (It Could happen to you) – The public wants to believe that it could happen to anyone despite the evidence to the contrary.

Genre BackgroundBBC Radio:Have a Go (1940s onwards), Wilfred Pickles and Mabel (with Violet Carson on the piano) – was one of the firstTop of the Form (1940s onwards) competing teams from secondary schools (once won by Mackie Academy)Currently Brain of Britain, Round Britain Quiz, Counterpoint, The News quiz …

BBC Television:What’s My Line? (1952 -62 plus revivals)Mastermind (1972 onwards) – good to teachUniversity Challenge (1962 onwards)Currently The Weakest Link, Eggheads, Question of Sport

ITV:Take your Pick, Double your MoneyCurrently Who Want To Be A Millionaire?, Goldenballs

Categories

• Big Money Prize

• Glory Prize

• Just for Fun

Deal or No Deal•Started with 1.5 million viewers before peaking at 4 million viewers (half of the available audience) before settling at about 2.5 million.

•Regularly in the top three rating pulled for channel 4 – despite going up against weekend and evening programmes which traditionally pull more viewers.

•Won a BAFTA for Best New Game Show

•Many articles have been written about it – highlights its place in popular culture

Deal or No Deal

•Many of the phrases adopted by the host, Noel Edmonds, have passed into common use – again this highlights its place in popular culture

•Promotes a “Think it enough” attitude.

Background to Deal or No DealDeveloped by Endemol (originator of Big Brother) in Holland

Sold to 45 countries (from Albania to Vietnam) but not to Britain

Turned down by BBC (association with gambling?) and by ITV

Background to Deal or No DealEventually taken by channel 4 to fill the late afternoon slot between Countdown and 5pm (then Richard and Judy) – The graveyard slot of afternoon television

Aimed to attract 1.5 million viewers in October 2005; rose to 2 million by November and 3.5 million by December

Won RTS award (2006) for Best Daytime Programme; nominated for a BAFTACatch phrase acquired currency (with variations)

Background to Noel Edmonds as host

Ex-public schoolboy, with BBC for 30yrs: initially its youngest Radio 1 DJ, then TV – Swap Shop, Noel’s House Party etc.

Had been in the wilderness since being dropped by BBC in 1999, when stunt went disastrously wrong

Pursued successful business career in interim

Failed to get Countdown vacancy, but career brought back to life by Deal or No Deal

The AudienceThe basic formula of Deal or No Deal undergoes certain changes to suit its particular national characteristics. In the American version, for example:

•The boxes are replaced by steel briefcases•There is only one player and the host is a wise-cracking comedian•The briefcases are held by female models•The Banker becomes a “mysterious entity”•The player’s family isn’t always friendly or consolatory.

This reflects the American “win at all costs” mentality.

The Audience

The German version has much in common with this: briefcases not boxes held by identically dressed girls, a silhouetted banker behind glass.

So what do these changes suggest about contrasting values?

The British Audience

What does the British version demonstrate?

•Altruism – an unselfish generosity to, or concern for, other people – basically wishing the best for each other•Unity - they eat, sleep and drink together – they even have feel good chants together•Communal goodwill•A belief in magic/superstition

This version taps into what we want to believe we are like – Basically as a nation we want to believe we are all genuinely nice people. How are these conveyed?

Target Audience

• Think about the people targeted by the advertising campaigns.

• Chocolate – Aero• Transformers Revenge of the Fallen DVD• Xbox 360• Mario Brothers for the Wii• Disney Holiday• Sponsors – King.com • Rude Boy Food (TV programme)• Windows 7• Pepsi Max

Institution

• Not all game/quiz shows share these values. Endemol’s Big Brother shows a darker side of community, as does The Apprentice. The Weakest Link invites gamesmanship and backstabbing; Golden Balls even encourages lying and cheating.

• But for channel 4, the particular mix of “feel good” emotions has paid off: well over 2 million viewers tune in daily, with related sponsorship and advertising pay-off.

Representation of the Players

• A cross section of society (“ordinary” people”)

• More of a mix in terms of race, age, demographic – they have even included people with a variety of disabilities – less discriminatory than other game shows. (Think about the contestants on Mastermind or University Challenge

Representation of the HostThe host of a quiz show is shown to us in a way which

conveys more than it may seem. His (occasionally her) representation is carefully constructed.

• Edmond’s “uniform” of freshly laundered, tight fitting patterned shirts, worn open necked, tucked into belted slacks conveys:

• Formality and informality (but it’s an unforgiving ensemble for a man in his 60s)

• Someone who looks after himself – forever youthful, full of energy, classless

This image is reinforced by his hair – a blondish grey bouffant – and perma-tanned skin (Peter Pan?)

Setting

• The opening sequence deserves frame-by-frame analysis, but the overall impression is of a robotic cartoon sequence from a factory production line with boxes rolling along a conveyor bent past framed images, one of which falls forward revealing a jagged hole through which we travel into the studio (alias the “dream factory”). The music complements the impression of dehumanised mass production.

Setting

• Have we broken in – and to what? The brick walls (lit to varied effect), the long benches with the human robots behind them, the utilitarian wooden floors, all suggest a factory or workshop.

Setting

• But the huge illuminated game board has other connotations. Is this more temple than factory? In that case, what roles do Edmonds, the Banker, today’s player, the participants, the studio audience play? (Edmond’s greeting at the start of the game show is often “Hello Pilgrims”!)

Opening SequenceThe show opens the same way every episode. Noel, talking to the audience announces the rules of the game:

22 boxes

A quarter of a million

One question

“Deal or No Deal”

Narrative

Success depends on a successful narrative formula (structure). In “Deal or No Deal” it is a predictable closed narrative, the cliff hangers confined to the ad breaks, the same in each show. Like a drama series, there is a cast of regulars who are in every show: here Noel Edmunds and the invisible Banker. Then there are short stay characters: the participants awaiting their chance to compete. And after each show the contestant, lucky or unlucky, departs.

Narrative

There is a mythic quality to Deal or No Deal in the echoes of the hero making the right (and not the obvious) choice: Merchant of Venice via Cinderella to Indiana Jones. Here the choice is of boxes and deals.

It is also possible to apply some of the most prominent theories of narrative:

Narrative Structure - Todorov

• Initial situation/equilibrium: 22 participants, 22 sealed boxes

• Disruption/disequilibrium: one participant becomes the contestant/player: Cannot turn back but can be seduced by the Banker

• Altered situation/ new equilibrium: the player, win or lose, leaves for ever.

Narrative Structure - Barthes

• The ENGIMA code which is resolved in each show

• Each contains no fewer than 29 enigmas (30 if a swap is offered) in less than 50 minutes.

Narrative Structure -ProppNarrative driven by characters that have particular

functions:• Hero – who departs on a quest – in this case the player• Villain – the hero’s opponent – the Banker• Donor – who gives the hero some magic power –

Adjudicator• Dispatcher – who sends the hero on his quest – Random

machine• Helper – who aids the hero – the players and audience

members, Noel• Princess – who is the hero’s reward, the object of his

quest – Money

“Hello Pilgrims” – creates the idea of a quest

Narrative Structure - Levi Strauss

Narrative based on pairing of opposites: here, obviously, deal or no deal

Narrative Structure – Soap Opera

What Deal or No Deal appropriates from the soaps is:

• A cast of all ages and character types• A focus on family and a community (forged by

the participants living together)• Manipulation of time: it is always ‘now’ –

Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween – Monday’s , Tuesday’s show (even though shows are actually recorded well in advance)

Ideology • What Deal or No Deal presents us with is an affirmation

of what we recognise as our ‘best’ qualities: graciousness in defeat, rejoicing in the success of others. Also the joy of seeing faceless bureaucracy defeated (especially today, if it is a banker!) – The about a Banker spanking.

• But behind these two more debatable beliefs: that money equals happiness and that anyone can be a winner.

• In the Deal or No Deal universe the symbolic progression is from worker doing a repetitive task (those 22 participants behind the benches) to the lucky contestant chosen for promotion to sit at the top table (complete with phone) with a chance to “change his (her) life forever”