What do you think to the latest news surroundin Brainteaser on channel 5 and has anyone ever entered?
Brainteaser along with a number of other programmes asks the audience to use very expensive premium 09 numbers to phone in. Brainteaser however was found to have put a member of the production team in front of the cameras and claimed he was a member of the public (he wasn’t) who had won a lot of money (he hadn’t) – that was dishonest, corrupt and might even be a criminal offence. Did you know that any firm that invites calls on an 09 number receives half of the call cost from BT? So for every pound you spent phoning Brainteaser or the X-Factor 50p went to the TV Company to finance the show. TV companies run a lot of quizzes with extremely easy answers just to encourage calls – watch GMTV and Keith Chegwin every morning giving away £10,000. GMTV earns millions of pounds a month from people who call to answer the stupidly easy quiz question. In my opinion, it is just short of a con trick. Why do the TV Companies do it? Because advertising on TV is in serious decline. Commercial TV is no
I watched a phone in word game on one of the freeview channels. It was always questions that had many answers and the caller had to find the right answer that had been previously selected. It was so obvious to me that the programmers could simply keep the competition going and ticking off the answers as they came in, then when only one answer was left let the first viewer that said it have the money. Or ensure that the caller is the stooge. Brainteaser I thought had the potential to be a good game, if the questions weren’t so easy. In fact I am sure they could have generated much more interest if they had made it more difficult. I often wonder just how real the XFactor is, you see in the early stages they concentrate, or at least ensure they show, those who are still in at the end. Ok, so the early stages are pre-recorded so there is a level at which they can do that anyway. But then they are more clues from the judges comments, they know who is popular and who isn’t. so can aim their
