End of Glitterball samples

A couple more Glitterballs, (the last of the planned sample) that I’ve been going through and some points from them, the dates were Saturday 28th July and Friday 7th September. Both shows featured a single ‘stack’ a word to have another word (or words) joined to it with 6 or 7 possible answers (see illustration). The words wer BACK and HALF.

Both shows were hosted By Alex Kramer and Craig Stevens, the 7th September show was shorter than normal due to changed ITV programming as a result of the death of Pavarotti .

These were the first programmes that I’ve viewed that had commercial break in them making them more like conventional ITV fayre, the breaks were single ones and were at 33 minutes into the show (7th September) and 52 minutes in (28th July).
Some answers were repeated a lot (e.g. Backgammon 6 times on 28th July and Moon 7 times on the 7th September)

£3,300 was awarded in prizes on 7th September and £9,000 on the 28th July, on the 28th July there was nearly 2 and a half hours from the last winner until the end of the show, which to me seems rather a long time between winners.

Any comments? ITVPlaysurvey@btopenworld.com

More Glitterball

Further analysis of the content in ITV's late night participation slot brings to light more stats.

On Wednesday 22nd of August’s Glitterball featured Craig Stevens and Katy Pullinger, the show started off with a ‘Wordsearch’ containing boy’s names and the programme awarded £7,000 in prize money, call volumes dropped as low as ‘an average of 63 per minute’ which is quite a drop from the maximum which was over 1,200 per minute.

It’s interesting that even at low call volumes callers are getting through more to be ''on-air' than once (at least two repeat callers on this show) it would seem that the dedicated participants are going far beyond the ‘suggested’ (on-air) limit of 5 calls per show and perhaps somehow going beyond the 100 calls in ITV Play’s terms and conditions, that number of calls would be around £750 per session at the BT call rate.

Statistically it appears that from the show analysed about 60% of the callers were female but the ratio of female to male winners was 6 to 1, I will also look to see if the all male and all female presenters swayed the balance at all on the shows surveyed.
Again there were two on air callers who were questioned by the presenters about their age (being too young).

ITV'S Glitterball versus their Make Your Play

ITV has 2 participation programmes each of which runs for 3 days of the week for a duration of (usually) around 4 hours per night/early morning. Sunday night is a night off for the participants- presumably for their good behaviour.
Having spent some time analysing ITV’s Make your Play I’ve now moved on to Glitterball which does pretty much the same job as 'Play' on the remaining nights of the week; ostensibly it’s much the same mix of word quizzes and puzzles but to me so far I’ve enjoyed watching it far more than Make your Play I put this down to a mixture of factors, the principal ones being the programme seems to be more about enjoyment rather than just a 'for money' quiz, the show has more interplay with the participants and amongst the hosts, with more 'two handed' action.
I would also judge Craig Stevens as an amusing guy, who is a self deprecating performer and can bounce off his co-hosts well, in this case the former Eternal singer Kelly Bryan (who seems to have a variable spelling of her first name).
On the show of the 26th July 83 calls went through to the studio and £10,000 was awarded (6 winners) in prizes (far more than I’ve seen on Make your Play) call volumes dropped to as few as an average of 50 per minute which still make the odds of getting through pretty slim but a little less than astronomical.
Interesting point on the show in question was that an underage caller was turned away (I wonder if there are a similar proportion amongst the callers who do not get through), another all girl winners night too