Originally Posted by Zac Quinn:
“I know Steve Williams always likes to point out that the UK's relative lack of real 'a listers' makes it much harder to sustain a nightly entertainment show here than in the US, and he'll probably be proven right in the long run, but it's high time someone at least gave it a good go. It's not like the US shows book Taylor Swift and Tom Hanks every night anyway: last night, for example, Jimmy Fallon interviewed Kevin James and Tim Gunn.”
Well, it's not so much the lack of guests that could be the problem, to be honest. The One Show seems to do well enough five days a week, and also if the show is good enough you don't have to live and die on the guests, people will watch it regardless. Of course when Wogan was on three nights a week he said he was happy with it because he thought that once a week the audience expect it to be an event, whereas more than once a week viewers are happy enough for a show to just tick along and if there's a dull one it doesn't really matter. And when Jack Docherty started he said it didn't matter if the guest had only been in one episode of Neighbours, there'd be enough funny things to talk about. If the show, the host and the regular features are enough of a draw, the guests are simply the icing on the cake.
The problem I think with a UK equivalent of the nightly chat show is not so much there aren't enough guests, but there isn't enough money, so you have small writing teams and small production teams and they run out of energy and ideas so quickly. Graham Norton did it every night for eighteen months and was OK, but he got a bit fed up with the routine quite quickly and it probably ran out of ideas too quickly because there was only a small writing team. In America they have enormous production teams generating ideas and they're also paying the presenters millions and millons of dollars to think about nothing else.
The other difference between British and American telly when it comes to chat shows is that in America all the channels show the same programmes every day. People fit the US chat shows into their routines because a) they're on really late and b) all the other channels are always showing the same programmes, so there's no real floating audience. If you watch Fallon one night, you probably watch it every night because it's up against the same things ever night. But here, especially at ten o'clock, other channels always show different things. You might be available at ten o'clock one night, but another night there'd be something else on. It's hard to get a regular audience because it's hard to get people to put stuff in their routine. I know there's the Ten O'Clock News but people who are avoiding the news (which presumably will be this show's audience) are all over the place. I think it's too hard to get people into a routine unless a show is very early in the evening (like The One Show) or very late.
I mean, I like the idea of it, and I hope it works for them if only to add a bit of variety to the schedule and extend it a bit. But the differences between the US and UK are seemingly too great.
Originally Posted by H of De Vil:
“Then you can't see very far.
I'm not sure what makes The Chase 'crap' to you?”
Well, sorry about this, but if they don't like The Chase, it's up to them, isn't it? We don't have to treat Pointless and The Chase exactly equally. If The Chase is beating Pointless in the ratings, good for The Chase. I'm still watching Pointless.
After years in the doldrums, could ITV LE finally be about to start to turn the corner? Let's hope.
