How many jackpots can quiz shows really payout?

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1:24Hello and welcome to The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond, twice a week this week. We are twice a week. we are formally beginning our questions sessions. Questions and answers. And answers, yeah. We won't just be us reading out your questions. Originally, I just thought let's do questions. But do you know what? I listened to the producers. They're right. Let's do answers as well. I would say do you want to begin, but I'm afraid I must begin with a little bit of housekeeping. Okay. On our Boxing Day episode where we began answering questions, I suggested that the first appearance of Boba Fett in the Star Wars holiday special, ill-fated and almost never seen again, made it canon.

2:02Thomas Aguirre-Fraga writes in to say, Hello, I regret to reinforce stereotypes about Star Wars fans, particularly one on the male spectrum, such as myself, but I feel the urge to write in to say that, very technically, the Star Wars holiday special was not the first appearance of Boba Fett. It is indeed the first on-screen appearance of Boba Fett, as the first broadcast of the Star Wars holiday special was November 17, 1978. However, on September the 24th, 1978, in the San Anselmo County Fair Day Parade, Boba Fett made his first public appearance. So I suppose Star Wars fans and pedants such as myself need truly to be considering Bay Area parades as canon.

2:42That is lovely. Thank you, Thomas. I stand correct. We all stand correct. And that's all we've got time for today. Do you know what? I'm not sure Thomas does regret reinforcing the stereotypes. I think he's happy to. None of us ever regrets reinforcing the stereotypes. If being in that parade, sorry to take this more seriously than maybe we should, but if being in that parade is canon, if that's the first appearance, then actually the person who made the costume, like the first person to see Boba Fett, was the first person who drew the costume. Yeah, I mean, it's... And so that's it. I mean, where do we go back to?

3:12Where do we go back to? Yeah, where do we go back to? I think that's a question, but we don't necessarily want everyone to send in their answers to it. Imagine if that's what this show was every week. it's just it's all but it's all Boba Fett all the time shall we shall we try and move on to other areas let us or should we do another 20 minutes on Boba Fett right should we do our first question yes Sarah Cannon says what are your opinions on spoilers does it ruin your enjoyment of something if it gets leaked yeah it does but I think there is a limit I think someone actually wrote in and said I had no idea you shouldn't have mentioned a certain event in succession because um I'm just starting watching it now and I thought well I mean the clue is in the title a bit and it was on the front of every single newspaper and all over social media for some weeks it sort of had full cultural dominance so in some cases I think you have to be allowed to talk about a thing that has happened in a television there has to be a statute of limitations I once got in trouble on pointless for giving away the plot of great expectations no it feels to me like that probably is we should be allowed to talk about yes there must come a point it's not clear when the limit is I think you just it's a bit like pornography you know it when you see it it's it's the old certainly as a writer if I know what's happened or can work out what happened as I'm watching the thing on screen I'm always thinking how are they going to get there how are they going to do it oh I see yes it does I mean it's it sort of takes away doesn't it but I do think there is a limit to how in a kind of culture what with social media and just any form of media where you can't keep every single thing secret and actually you know that's why linear isn't dead in lots of ways people watch those new episodes of the very very big shows they try and watch them that night the next night and they stay away from social media in between well that's the thing i i think listen i'm i don't like spoilers but i don't like people who who will go on twitter and then say i can't believe you gave away the end of that you think i mean honestly if you really really want to watch the end of you know whether it's traitors or whether it's the apprentice whether it's succession and you're going to watch it tomorrow do not go on twitter tonight that is that's really really on you i think i think i think you have it's like there's the famous episode of um likely lads where um uh the the boys trying to you know avoid the football result they do everything that they can do to avoid the football results so they can watch it on match of the day uh do you know what it's got an interesting ending that show but i won't give away what that ending is in case people people want to watch it.

5:44And that's from the 70s. So, you know, perhaps I am more sensitive to spoilers. But I think Sarah goes on to say she likes spoilers. That she goes, she literally reads up on what happens. She said that as an anxiety-reducing tool, she goes and reads ahead to find out what happens. But she is aware that that's unusual. I really, really get that, though. I find it very hard to watch television programs that are anxiety-inducing. I want to fast-forward through to the bit where it's okay. but you know like if someone is wrongly accused of something I can't I cannot watch until it's been sorted out I find it unbearable in my books if there's moments of jeopardy I sort them out pretty quickly because I like moments of jeopardy but I'm not going to let something kind of just bubble for chapters and chapters and chapters because I find it too upsetting and it's interesting lots of new dramas and lots of comedies now where actually they dial down the jeopardy quite a lot.

6:42Or if there is jeopardy, it's solved quite quickly. And I think that's becoming a cultural thing because I think a lot of people find it very awkward to watch things that are tense. And so I'm with Sarah on that. Gosh, how interesting. Yeah, but other than I wouldn't... I haven't been aware of that, but okay, I'm going to be looking out for it now. Yeah, I wouldn't go to the very end. You don't want to find out who's won certain things. No. Do you? Or, you know, one of the great joys is to be able to watch Match of the Day not knowing any of the results, which these days is almost impossible. And also I would never do it because I need to know if Fulham have lost, which invariably they have.

7:20Very good question, though. But I do think if you are deliberately spoiling things for people, that's a very, very bad look. That is certainly a character note. But, yeah, great expectations. I will not tell you what happens. Okay, Nick Harnett writes, what does the job of showrunner entail and how is someone like Taylor Sheridan, Taylor Sheridan is the showrunner of Yellowstone, America's most popular show, Taylor's production company 1901, by my calculation, made five to six Paramount shows last year, all massive productions. How is he able to sustain multiple productions at once? Well, the job of showrunner, which we'll begin with, this is a sort of, it's more of a US role and we'll come to differences in the UK in a minute, but a showrunner is the creative authority on the show, the ultimate creative authority, Most likely they had the original idea and developed it.

8:06They may have developed it from source material, e.g. now Warners are looking for a showrunner for the Harry Potter series, which they're going to turn into one whole TV series per book. That's a good idea. Where do they get their ideas from? Well, in a way, they think their property is laying dormant for too long. So anyhow, but the showrunner, it's a huge job. You are liaising, apart from overseeing all the writing and doing a lot of writing yourself, you're running the writer's room, you are dealing with the heads of departments every creative decision on that show comes through you. Taylor Sheridan is a specific case he lives on a ranch so I think he's quite and he writes a huge amount of Yellowstone I think he's written something like 60 episodes of it which is more than a lot of people will write of television in their entire careers.

8:51And as you say a show that we don't really know over here but it's the biggest show in America. It's the biggest show. The Kevin Costner one right? I think it's on five now. Yes I I think it is now. I think they have bought it. What I will say is that a lot of people you see get that many credits. The writer's room has broken the story. Writers have gone away and written first, second, multiple drafts. And then the showrunner might rewrite that and essentially take the credits. You can imagine what a lot of writers feel about this particular thing. But it's not something I've experienced. But a lot of people do.

9:21That does sometimes happen. So people can. It's really hard to be across everything. There's only so much of one person. And so he hasn't got a sort of time to, like, what's the name in Harry Potter? So he can't. So he can't do it to the extent that someone like Jesse Armstrong would do on Succession. Yeah, it's a weird combination of writer and producer, isn't it? Showrunner, essentially. So in the UK, that would be writer and producer combined. In the UK, you always see executive producer, which always hides a multitude of sins. Yeah, yes. You know, it can literally be the person who's working hardest to someone who works in the office at the production company.

9:52There's an awful lot hidden behind exec producers. and in the US it can mean writer because the WGA have been so strong on getting credits for people that you can be created as the executive producer of a show on which you are effectively a writer and you get production credits. Well that's it on those succession credits all the exec producers are essentially the writers in the writer room. Yes but they do the most senior ones but those most senior ones will also be in charge of being in charge of a lot of stuff on location being doing more than just someone who is more junior in the writer's room is concerned.

10:22I have a question i like that your questions are about very very high-end incredibly expensive american drama and mine are about daytime quizzes this is from dovia udin are the questions on daytime daily quizzes weighted to ensure there isn't a daily payout or are the questions selected randomly i only ask because it seems to me it would be very expensive if the jackpot was won every day um thank you dob it well it's a very good question and the questions wouldn't be weighted particularly in that way but lots of formats have ways of ensuring there isn't a payout so you'll do like a final round um where you could win or you couldn't win the jackpot so on pointless you don't win the jackpot every day you win it every few days um on something like you always have an algorithm so in in your budget daytime budgets are very small but in your budget will be a line item for prize money so when we used to make deal or no deal for example which is a very good example because it's all about money.

11:17And you've got that£250 ,000 box all the way down to the 1P box. And the average amount of money we were supposed to give away was£16 ,500 a day. So that's the thing, which means you can win a quarter of a million, but an awful lot of other people are going to have to win£2 ,000. It's the truth. And there's an algorithm that you put together for shows that give away a million. You can be insured as well in case your algorithm breaks. But yeah, so on Deal on Odeel, We know we've got 16 ,000 to give away, which is quite a lot, given that a lot of people do crash and burn and walk away with 50 pence or walk away with 500 pounds.

11:54You can be having those 50 ,000, 70 ,000 wins. Very, very few people, four or five in our run of it, go all the way and go for the 250 ,000 pounds. So you've got a 250 ,000 box. But the beauty of that format is you're left with 250 ,000 pounds and 15 pounds. and you're going to be offered 70 ,000. Very few people are turning that down. Schrodinger. Very, very few. Some people didn't. It's great, but very few people are turning that down. Now, it's interesting on the ITV reboot of it they've just done with Stephen Mulhern, which is very good. There's no 250 ,000-pound box. The highest box is 100 ,000-pound.

12:36That is because their daily payout is probably something around 12 ,000. so they can't afford to have that£250 ,000 in there. It's an algorithm. In fact, an algorithm... Can the algorithm break, like you just said? Not really. That algorithm was weirdly written by the banker, the guy who was a banker, Glenn Hugel, who's a mathematical genius. And so that's his algorithm and it's worked for years and years and years and years. But we did a show called Million Pound Drop with Davina for many years, which is a really good show. It was the best-selling show in the world for three years running. Was he?

13:10A million pounds dropped the format, yeah. Was that Endermar? Yeah, back in the days where you could make money out of formats. You can't anymore. So we were doing that show and you're given a million pounds and you move it across various answers and across 10 questions, you gamble some of it and you walk away. If you get to the last question, you walk away with whatever money you've got left. And our average payout for that, I think, was supposed to be 35, 40 ,000, something like that. So it was prime time. So it was nice money because, again, a lot of people are leaving with nothing. And so you can really bump it up.

13:46Literally the very first episode we did, the very first episode, the very first couple on the very first episode, this couple got all the way through to question 10 and they still had half a million pound on the table, which that's a problem for us because we got£40 ,000 an episode and we did like 12 episodes. So that's all of our prize money gone in one. and they had like a 50-50 question with half a million pounds. So you have to put all£500 ,000 on the same thing. And they put it on the wrong trapdoor and they lost all of it, which is awful for them, but absolutely saved the show. If they'd won that in the first one, is there a sense also that it's downhill from there, that they won't do it?

14:30Apart from the financial outlay, would you have all felt that, Okay, it's like someone winning a million hour on the first episode. That's the problem. Someone at some point can win half a million. Yeah. But on the first episode, you're thinking, oh, hold on. It'll never be as good again. Or have we got this wrong? It's the algorithm. On that show, there are certain junctures at which you have a very difficult question where you're almost forced to split your money because you're asked, which is the tallest building out of these four? And it's very, very difficult to have a definitive right answer.

15:02And so it's designed to make you spread your money. but this couple just happened to play it particularly brilliantly. Now the problem would be is if, okay, we can give away this half a million but what if we then give away another half a million and then another half a million and the ashen faces amongst, as producers we are quite happy because it's amazing telly if they win or they don't win but Channel 4 were like, what have we bought here? You're going to bankrupt us. But yeah, so by and large if you watch lots of shows, that you'll find some of them have end games where you can lose all your money.

15:37You know, pointless it is. We have, I think it's like£1 ,500 a day is our budget. So there's always£1 ,000 that goes up every day and then, you know, extra money for pointless answers and things like that. We had to recently introduce a new round where you could add extra money to the jackpot because we were slightly under where we should have been on our jackpot. But, you know, people often say, why is the prize money so bad on pointless? And the answer is because it's your money. It's paid for by the license fee. But yeah, it all comes down to when it's commissioned by the channel, you have a number in that budget, which is your prize money number.

16:11And if you go over that, you probably have to make up the shortfall yourself. If you go massively over it and it's sort of everyone's fault, then you share that burden. But otherwise, that's coming out the bottom line of the production company, which production companies don't like. No, I cannot imagine. Okay, Paul Leonard says, what percentage of books that have the film rights purchased ever get made? This is an interesting one because a huge percentage of films and TV are based on books as original material. But I am told by someone who works as an agent that about 1 % of the books which are options, so that's the ones that they've actually paid for the rights, ever make it to screen.

16:55It's absolutely right. An awful lot of books do get optioned. Of course, your book was optioned. Your book, Thursday Murder Club, was optioned before it even was published. Yes. And bought by Steven Spielberg. And bought by Steven Spielberg. And that's, well, that's the interesting part, is I've been around long enough to know that most books get optioned and very few books get made. And there's all sorts of reasons for that. Mainly it's very difficult to get anything made in any genre anywhere. Absolutely. But it's actually quite cheap to option a book. so if you're a production company you know you can pay five grand for certain books and have a have a year-long have them on the shelf and then you know you can then extend the option another year if you've made progress and you can keep them on the shelf yeah absolutely right so when I was selling the rights to the Thursday Murder Club as you say before it came out and Amblin which is Spielberg's company came in and said they'd like to buy it what I'm thinking then is this this book is never going to get made into a film because i know that the numbers suggest that however bigger book might become but you know most things don't get made into a film so i think this is not going to get made into a film however i'm just about to go out and promote this book and the fact that steven spielberg has bought the rights is a is a really good thing to have in your back pocket but it is i mean it's kudos and you know you know storytelling and so for me selling it to Amblin was literally this is going to be helpful for me in selling this book in lots of different territories and all sorts of things.

18:25But I didn't think for a second it would ever get made. It turns out it is going to get made this year, which is very, very exciting. It's been quite a while. The continuing hard luck story of this book. Goodness me. It's a little book that could, isn't it? When am I going to get a break? So yeah, it's getting made this year. But yeah, most things don't. It's with the streamers and stuff there's more and more books are being made and in the world I'm from crime fiction and thrillers there's actually quite quite a good sort of conversion rate so it would be more than one percent I think for for crime and thrillers especially with the streamers I think I think now the whole industry is contracting yeah it might it might go back to that but yeah the truth is it's it's quite cheap to buy the rights to a book it's very very very very expensive to film a book so in between those two numbers there's there's there's an awful lot of drop off and And the way those things are structured are, you'll get money for an 18-month option.

19:20They might then extend it if there's a little bit of interest. But again, it'll be at the same rate. But there's a purchase price. On the first day of principal photography, which is essentially when the cameras start rolling, that's when the real money kicks in. But essentially, the production companies don't really have to spend very much at all to buy a book unless they actually start filming it, at which point they're making money anyway. Here is a question. I wonder if you can answer this, because I don't have the answer to this. I suspect you might. Ruth Cousins asked this. Fast-forwarding through the I'm a Celeb adverts, my 16-year-old daughter asked how much ads in a massive show like that cost.

19:59I have literally no idea, so I thought I would ask you. Okay, it is about 300 grand for, say, a 30-second spot on I'm a Celeb, and that is obviously probably the biggest real estate for advertising because it's such a huge show. I saw that Ruth also said, has the contents of ads changed now that advertisers know that at best they're viewed at half times speed? This is definitely something I feel a bit sad about because I feel like I grew up in a great age of TV advertising where we all sat there and we were hostages. There was barely anything to switch over to because there was relatively few channels.

20:36The good old days. And so you've got those incredible... You know, someone like Jonathan Glazer, who is, I'm going to keep banging on about Zone of Interest, which is this incredible film coming out in, I think it was midway through February, start of February. But he was responsible for some of those, you know, the Guinness Surfer ad, the Nike Parklife ad, do you know the Sony Bravia where the whole paint tower exploded, the whole tower block exploded in colours and things like that with paint. Did he do, we hope it's chips, it's chips? He did not do that one. But obviously there was a whole thing where lots of brilliant directors started in television commercials.

21:13I don't feel there's a scope anymore now. You sometimes see it with cinema adverts. But in general, advertising is like get the information out there as quickly as possible. And often in writing on the screen, because as you say, Ruth, people are fast forwarding through them and not watching them. And a phenomenon I noticed when my children were quite young, which was that when we even asked them what they wanted for Christmas, I would have an entire list as a child. things that I never got. I'd like the Barbie house, please. Yeah, you'll never get it, Marina. I'd like this. Everything that I'd seen on adverts, on TV.

21:42My children never watched adverts. They didn't basically watch scheduled television. So they didn't really know things to ask for unless you sort of took them to a toy shop. They hadn't seen things, which I thought was a real shift. Anyway. I always wanted Skeleth's trick. Oh, yeah. Never got it. Never got it. Never got it. It's a shame, isn't it? Yeah. But 300 grand for a 30 second commercial. That's quite long, a 30 second one. I mean, you don't, you know, so they're not all paying 300 grand. But so you need to be the big, very, very big brands to do that. And, you know, TV, linear TV advertising, which would be our big main channels, you know, declining hugely.

22:18So every story is, oh, the collapse of linear television, the collapse of, it's still massive. I mean, it's still sort of the most effective thing you can do to launch a brand or to keep a brand up. But it's, yeah, as you say, it's not what it was in the days of, we hope it's chips, it's chips. Yeah. There is one thing which is bigger, which never obviously used to exist, which is sponsorships of shows, but brand sponsor shows, because then they get that minute at the 20 seconds at the start when you're sitting down to watch and you will, you know, and it will go on the front, whether you're watching a catch up, whether you're watching anything.

22:49So that that is a much bigger business than it ever was. And there's all sorts of legislation around how many adverts can be shown. I think an ITB hour, a commercial hour is 46 minutes. A half hour would be 24 minutes. So you've got six minutes of adverts or 14 minutes of adverts. someone who's in the show that's being advertised in is not allowed to do the voiceover for example news readers are not allowed to do voiceovers things like that so all sorts of um little rules but yeah that's why whenever you watch something on itvx say or you're for on demand if you pay to get rid of the adverts they're all 46 minutes long yeah if that which is you know that's that's uh the rest of it is adverts um let's take a 300 000 pound break shall Yeah.

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25:31Welcome back everybody. Marina, I have a question from Christine Knight. I think this is a great question. With the rise in true crime podcasts and documentaries for entertainment, has there ever been a story told which, in your opinion, should have been left alone out of respect? Oh, that's a good one. It's how it turns out, which is whether or not you think it's been respect. I personally don't think anything should be off limits for art or creativity. some of the true crime podcasts I think seem to me complete voyeurism and are awful but that's just a question of execution I don't think that anything should be beyond being tackled as a subject one thing I would say over the past few years is that I'm very very bored of the propensity for any story to become immediately too war almost immediately after it's happened a crime story two warring documentaries then a book and then a kind of netflix drama i i can you by the time you get to the end i don't know the elizabeth holmes story or something like that you think yeah i think i'm across what happened on this one now i think i'm think i'm across the con now um so i think that what will get scaled down in now there's going to be probably half as many scripted shows as there were if we've passed the era of peak tv or whatever but the documentaries will continue because they're much cheaper to make it just depends on the execution actually the recent ITV drama, The Long Shadow, last year's, which was probably the first time that Yorkshire Ripper story had been told from the, actually the victims don't like the phrase, look, the Yorkshire Ripper, so my apologies for using it.

26:59But from the point of view of the women and the point of view of the families of the victims. And so that is an example of something where, yes, I think going back to that story, yes, again, would just have been sort of salacious and we kind of know it, but doing it from that different angle put right lots of wrongs that maybe past dramas have um have wrought and so i think that kind of it just depends on the execution but i don't think anything should be off limits yeah there's certainly some schlocky ones that you you start watching in five minutes and you're like oh yeah i suspect this is not for me and that's difficult you can't really legislate against it but yeah again there's an itv one the sixth commandment the timothy spall one about the awful sort of narcissist he moved in with old people and killed them and it was it was so beautifully done i was talking about my wife and I listen to lots and lots of true crime podcasts.

27:46And I think one of the things you can take from it is there is an undercurrent in lots of them of very troubled, narcissistic human beings who then become awful and controlling. You know, that seems to be a subset of... Is that the podcasters I sometimes feel? Well, listen, no comment. But I think it's quite useful sometimes in working out who the people are who commit crimes and I think so long as a podcast nails its colors to the mask very early which is this is about the victim I'm talking to the victim's family and they're happy to talk to me they understand why I'm doing what I'm doing then I'm always very very happy to listen to them but the other cautionary tales I suppose but yes occasionally you listen to podcasts and there's sort of a glee in people's voices or it's clear that the investigative reporter wants to be the star of the podcast.

28:41And you just think this... I like the way it's sent up in Only Murders in the Building where Tina Fey plays a sort of absolutely kind of exploitative. I think she's got a sort of about six franchises of crime podcasts by this point. So I think, yes. But obviously at the kind of lowest level, I would say it is honestly people just turning up to crime scenes saying I'm doing a podcast and they've just got an iPhone. And I just don't think that's obviously remotely acceptable. I know you hear from the police these days. every single time there's any sort of investigation there's like horrendous tick tockers yeah no are you no i that those those people should if it's not if it's honestly just you doing it for tick tock then i don't think that that is something that should be democratized down to that extent i think whenever covering stuff like crime you should have a whole structure where you can put what your the content you're creating through various checks and balances and it can be questioned ethically and i just don't think one person acting alone can do that thank you christine great question okay here's a good one paul o 'connor says why do all children in american film and tv shows have to sound like adults usually adults with insight into the particular problems of their parents guardians is it just american script writers who seem incapable of accepting that children are children well it's hard isn't it because you need every character in a in something to do a job for you and you've got to move the story on or be insightful one way or another and And that thing of, oh, actually, if I put these words in the mouth of an innocent child, perhaps they'll carry extra weight.