TV Phone In Quiz Shows

TV phone in quiz shows are a waste of money...

For those of you who do those millions of phone in TV quiz shows that have started to spring up... you are probably wasting your money.

Whilst they might seem like they offer a great chance to win on the surface and they might just seem a bit of fun, there are surely tens of thousands up and down the country whose pockets are now considerably lighter than they were before they started watching those shows, and that is not at all compensated by the very few whose pockets are heavier.

The fact is that most of those games have an appalling chance of letting you win. The majority are obscure or have so many possible answers that the chances of winning are tiny.

For instance, here is the typical sort of 'game' that you get on these shows, where you then phone in and are charged 75p irrespective of if you get to the studio or not.

For this game you might win £1,000.

MA _ E
M _ SS
DA _ E
BE _ T

Now, the aim is to find the one word that makes four more complete words. On the face of it you might think there is only one or two words that fit, but in fact there are a couple of hundred words that can fit there.

What does that mean? Well, if you get through to the studio, there is only a one in two hundred chance of getting it right.

And let's say it takes 50 calls to get through to the studio - and the actual number may on average be a lot higher than that, it means you need to make 10,000 phone calls to win that prize.

And the cost? Well it's 10,000 x 75p = £7,500. That's nice - an extra £6,500 on what you would end up winning.

Of course this is obvious to most - the shows only operate to make big fat profits - they have the wages of presenters to pay, wages of all the back-room staff, the studio costs, and so on and so forth. In fact most of these programs don't have ad breaks so they even have to compensate the ad revenue that would have been coming in from those slots.

In short, the TV companies that run the programs need to make very sure that only one thing get's minted from running the show - and that is, of course, the show itself.

Here is another classic puzzle:

"Add all the numbers"

Nineteen minus fifteen =
4 + 2 X 3 =
6 - 5 =

Now that puzzle ran for several months on and off on a TV quiz show, and no surprise either. There are tens of thousands of possible interpretations of the instructions, and therefore thousands and thousands of possible answers.

In other words, the only sensible strategy is to systematically go from the numbers 0 through to say, 5000, and try them all as answers. If you try them all in random order, crossing off as you go through, then that's 250,000 phone calls you need to make (takes a lot of time) at a cost of £187,500.

Now if the puzzle rang for several months, imagine all the calls that were really made for that puzzle. Who do you think got minted? That's right - the people that run the particular show must have been laughing all the way to the bank.

The worst bit is that most people who phone in are not mathematically astute (for reasons that are now obvious). In the main it seems to be lonely old grannies and people who have come back home after a couple of drinks and aren't thinking straight. So in a sense these shows are more about exploiting people rather than genuine attempts to give money away.

It seems strange that in a world where we have to state the horribly obvious on every product to save against litigation (warning: this coffee made with boiling hot water is hot and might burn you if you spill it) that such shows don't have to reveal average figures like (warning: on average you will need to spend £7,500 to win £50) or whatever the average win / spend ratio is for these shows.

Author: Dan

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Last Updated: Oct 9th 2006

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