Originally Posted by John_Packham1:
“The contestants have a built in disadvantage in the final chase.
1) They have to press a buzzer.
2) The presenter then has to name them to answer the question.
This takes at least two seconds, meaning that they could lose 20 seconds or more.
The chaser does not have to press a buzzer and he/she does not have to be nominated.
To make it fair, the chaser should press a buzzer to indicate they have an answer and then the presenter should then say something like 'go ahead chaser'.
johnep”
Welcome to Digital Spy. I see this is your first post.
Making the Chaser press a buzzer and then having to wait for Bradley to say "Go ahead Chaser" would be too slow and cumbersome. It just wouldn't be good television. The tension when the Chaser's running out of time and is closing in the team's total and is firing out the answers faster and faster would be completely lost if they had to keep pressing a buzzer all the time.
it's true that the Chaser has an advantage in that they do not have to buzz in, but remember that the players have one huge advantage over the Chaser - they get a shot at any question the Chaser gets wrong, and if they get it right they push the Chaser back one step. That was the difference between the team winning and losing on Tuesday. The Chaser does not get a chance to push the team back on the questions they get wrong in the Final Chase. If they did, most of the time the team would have next to no chance, in fact a lot of the time they'd be lucky to even get into double figures.
Also remember that the players get a head start, and the more there are, the bigger it is. A four step head start for a full team is a lot, if you reckon on each correct answer taking about four or five seconds, then the Chaser has to spend about twenty seconds of their time just clawing back the head start a full team gets.
I think the way it is structured is fine.
”
