ITV Play. Some may not even bother using this channel, or even have a chance to see it as they are tucked up in bed before it airs on ITV1 in the early hours of the morning. If you are in this group, consider yourself lucky because you are not missing much. This mindless drivel of 'interactive quiz TV' has previously been confined to a few cable/satellite channels, promoting viewers to ring up premium rate lines to answer a simple question and win a big cash prize. ITV have now caught onto the idea, creating their own channel which airs this type of programming for a great deal of the day and as stated above, after the daily programming of ITV1.
As far as gambling goes, it is argued whether that this type of programming can actually be placed in this category. MP Paul Farrelly has even gone as far to state that these type of shows are "tantamount to theft", in reference to their extortionate cost and the length of each call, even when some callers do not get through to the studio. One recent news article which has highlighted the honesty of TV quiz telephone phone in is the Richard and Judy quiz scam. They have just felt the sting of their foney quiz competition which invited callers to participate in the 'You Say, We Pay' competition despite already selecting competitors for the daily show. ITV Play programming certainly has the lure of a gambling craze; with people phoning up all the time confident that they will be quids in and willing to risk their own fortune to get it. In addition, the popularity and appeal of the show has astounded me - I recently went onto Youtube and the swams of people who have posted videos of their Quizmania successes and and others who comment on how good the show is demonstrate that this craze is not falling flat on its feet just yet. Can you blame them? We as Brits do enjoy a flutter and we think nothing of daily phone line competitions which offer us things we could can only dream of. But maybe thats what wrong here; just because the viewer is flung into a friendly, 'cash mansion' instead of a dark, smoke filled casino, doesn't mean we are still not gambling.
But that isn't what worries me totally here. Yeah, gambling can be considered as a social ill when you think of the lives it can destroy. My concern is that this what we can consider to be the future of TV as the viewing market gets more competitive. The addition of digital TV via freeview and the sheer number of channels which Sky produces has prompted the terrestrial corporations to wake up and maintain their monopoly over what we watch. This isn't new - of course not, but now we are witnessing a real revolution in how we watch TV and how we use it. The TV watching experience is now increasingly becoming two way, not one way. Again not a new idea; I remember GMTV doing phone-ins when I was a child, plus Comic Relief and Children In Need are also prime examples of couch-potato-participation. It is the explosion which has been sparked by technology which has made the idea a lot more popular. Sky Channels like Fame TV ask viewers to send in their videos from their mobile phones or via the internet so that they can be viewed on the TV, and people text to vote for their favourite. The success of web 2.0 on the internet websites like Wikipedia and Youtube, where information such as videos and pictures passes so much easier from user to user and the rise of the mobile phone, in bringing us text messages mobile cameras makes this interaction possible and relatively attractive.
But better communications alone is not the reason why you can't see re-runs of your favourite ITV programmes at night anymore. This type of TV is seen as the way to go as it is cheap to make and very profiting when you look at the revenue it generates. ITV are laughing behind our backs and so they should - all they have to do is get a Big Brother has-been like Brian Dowling to be his usual flamboyant self for a few hours and watch the punters try their luck.
As a concerned citizen worrying about the state of society, I choose not to moan where the next supercasino will end up and its effects on the locality; but instead, I opt to worry about the casino which slipped in through the back door and effects everyone, everywhere, at around 12am each night. On the other hand, as a man of rationality, I agree that if you are stupid enough to phone these lines, you can't moan about the costs they incur. I simply advocate that if you don't like what you see, turn it over to ITV2 and watch the repeat of Corro and Emmerdale. If that prospect is even worse for you, just turn the damn thing off.
