Challenge - June 2016 onwards

I'm not sure about that, it seems to be they just showed it because it has signing, and it was the period when channels had to show a certain amount of signed content, which they tended to stick on late at night, Family Catchphrase was one of the few shows they'd had signed, so they stuck it on to fill their quota. I don't recall them ever showing the non-signed versions in that period, but I could be wrong.

The first lot of repeats they broadcast (after I mentioned how it was one of their own productions) weren't signed, few recordings on YouTube:



IIRC this was right after they bought the rights to show the first Nick Weir series thinking it was another Roy one.

And yet, when Matthew Kelly took over presenting You Bet, for the first couple of series, it still had the air of it being 'Brucie's show'.

Problem with You Bet was LWT brought the format (even though it was rather disingenuiously given the 'based on an idea by' in the credits) knowing that if they could do it like the German original 'Wetten Dass', Brucie would be one of the few hosts to make it work.

Wetten Dass had celebrities, so plenty of chat, it had song perfomances, it had members of the public doing challenges big and silly - so, plenty of pre task banter with the MoP's, and it had a huge studio audience (even though it was a travelling show which pitched up in massive conference arenas for each show around the Germanic speaking countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland) which allowed interaction with the audience.
It was on paper, the perfect format and setting to let Bruce loose on.

Problem was, Wetten Dass was a) live and b) open ended in running time. Both things that LWT probably never thought was going to fly with the other ITV stations, so to get it down to the 53 minutes in the ITV hour, out went a lot of the celeb chat, singers and guest performances, and out went a lot of the challenger banter.

So, from being a potential ringmaster of a live challenge and entertainment programme, he was reduced to plain old Brucie, the game show host.

A shame and a waste of his talents.

A trivial issue but I thought I'd flag it up.
Challenge showed the final episode of Blankety Blank Series 1 tonight, but missed the final 10 minutes of the game after going to a break - instead broadcasting trailers for Sky programmes, a movie Top 10 review and adverts?? The continuity announcer, presumably pre-recorded, interrupted halfway through the initial episode to announce the next programme and a graphic came up to illustrate this also. They then immediately went to the 1st episode of Series 4?

Not important of course, but I assume this was a transmission or playout error rather than something which was controversial and unable to be broadcast in the final few minutes of the programme, which is unlikely given the context of the show.

I heard a similar thing happened with Strike it Lucky recently.

I'm disappointed to see Challenge+1 will be closing down at 6am on 1st June 2020.

With +1 channels costing not that much to run, but are highly beneficial for the ad revenue it's a strange decision by Sky.

I suspect Pick+1 is staying (for now) as that has a slot on Freeview so they can't take that off air as there will be nothing to fill the Freeview slot with.

I just hope that the main Challenge channel does not close....as some are predicting it might... (to make way for Sky Arts FTA).

To be honest the way the general operations of Challenge have being wound down (ie social media's abandoned, website not available in favour of the corporate one at sky.com, little new acquisitions that aren't Chase related notwithstanding a bunch of "new" stuff they've aired before under previous management and a schedule that looks and feels tired), I would not be in the least bit surprised if its gone by the end of next year.

Hardly any value at all I'd have thought in Challenge having a +1 - generally speaking they're showing what they were showing an hour ago on the main channel anyway. Just surprised it didn't happen a week earlier with all the new Sky channels launching this week (do they even bother launching them in SD nowadays?)

Challenge now is probably suffering from there being very slim pickings of "classic" gameshows from the 2000s - it wasn't the best of decades for the genre and although the older stuff has it's appeal, and of course they do well with Pointless and The Chase, it is all quite repetitive.


To be honest if Sky Arts did come to Freeview firstly I'd hope they replace Pick+1 over a full channel first, but a time share arrangement would work well with Challenge, which I imagine performs fairly strongly during the day, then Sky Arts can air at night when it's audience is most likely to be watching.

Seems Challenge slipped up not getting Tipping Point. 'W' show it for 6 hours a day and it's regularly in their top 10.

If Sky did want rid and were willing to sell rather than close then I think they'd be a few potential buyers - Sony might be the most obvious choice.

Having checked the audience figures, it looks inevitable that Challenge will be removed on Freeview if they proceed with adding Sky Arts.

Based on the last week of audience figures from BARB, the top 15 shows from Pick are between 193,000 and 226,000, so pretty consistent, with the audience across the day. However, for Challenge, the top 15 is between 180,000 and 90,000, a big difference, with the audience watching between 8pm and midnight. Unsurprisingly, 9 out of 15 shows are The Chase.

The weekly reach of Sky Arts is already higher than Challenge, so with Freeview, it can only increase.

Whilst the audience figures only tell half the story, unless Challenge is dirt cheap to run and makes more than Pick from the slot, its days (on Freeview at least) are likely to be numbered.

I feel like Sony could make more of an effort showing classic game shows, it'd be easier for them because they have plenty of money to buy the rights in a way where they could probably just gain IP ownership over them. Sort of how they did for Millionaire, leaving them the ability to just play the entire series from start to finish over and over on Sony Channel without needing to "acquire" individual series' rights like Challenge have to do.


I agree that it's looking likely Challenge will vanish into the void which will be a shame historically, given Challenge helped keep programmes like a lot of 80s and 90s game show programming available to a modern audience: programmes such as Crystal Maze, Supermarket Sweep and Knightmare helped result in the revival of CM by Channel 4, a one-off YouTube special of Knightmare with the original cast and Rylan Clark-Neal fronting a revival of Supermarket Sweep.

I hope it doesn't, but if it looks that way with no saving it, ITV or Sony should buy up the channel and all associated rights and perhaps expand the actual variety of programmes broadcast by buying up more rights in the way I mentioned above. I include ITV here because half the programming on Challenge seems to be ITV-based, so it would return the rights of some of those programmes to the original broadcaster, perhaps leaving ITV a large array of classical programming for their channels. But Sony would 100% be my pick for buying up Challenge.

I would say being on EPG 11 on freeview helps Pick's viewing figures compared to Challenge. Stick Pick on EPG 46 and I would expect its ratings to drop like a fly.

I dont see why Challenge would/should close? Its cheap as chips to run, every single ad break is jam picked to the brim of Sky ads/promos. Every programme is sponsored by some sky branded product...and the Challenge brand is well known to joe public, with lots of FTA eyeballs on freeview and astra satellite viewers.

It's one of those channels you can leave on all day in the background, with sky ads being heard by your ears every 15 minutes or so....and hay, they can even get away with broadcasting it in sub standard SD picture...something I don't think they could do with 'highbrow' Sky Arts.