above: "The Chase UK" . Goodness, who doesn't love this programme?
Just after I retired I was determined to try out all new things - my friend and I auditioned for tv quiz shows, and we were chosen for several.
Very few people realise that in some quiz shows there is (or was?) an audition to first get through. Quiz questions are asked by the production people, forms filled in, people are graded. The tv people know how clever, or not-all-that-clever, are the participants. . Me, I probably fitted into the not-all-that-clever category.
So, because the tv people know the quiz intelligence level of all candidates, they know how to get a mixture of different intelligence types to sit on the one panel. "Ah," we think from watching on our sofas at home, "that one guy is really clever, he out-ranks the others by miles. What a pity, he's being held back by them."
I used to wonder why the losing participants always vehemently thank a host for a totally fantastic day. I mean ... they lost the game. All they did was sit or stand there and answer a few questions. Most of them wrong. How could the day be so fantastic? It should be terrifying and embarrassing, surely?
But the fantastic-ness comes from behind the scenes. Many tv shows keep the participants around for most of the day. Often the applicant gets a nice hotel stay included (twice I was flown return to Auckland).
A good meal or two is included, a tour of the studio, meeting tv personalities. Perhaps there's a silly game so that you can memorise your fellow quizzers' names and backgrounds. The lovely production people can make the time enjoyable.
On 3 different shows, I won $800, a music system, and another music system. On another, I flunked out miserably. On yet another, I was a panel contestant for an end-of-season show where the whole of the New Zealand viewing public was batting for the super-intelligent guy who had made it through several weeks already. He won...
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