- Title: HUNGARY: New interactive quiz shows from Hungary take television by storm
- Date: 12th January 2007
- Summary: (CEEF) BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (RECENT) (REUTERS) TV SCREEN SHOWING POLISH PRESENTER FRENCH SHOW DIRECTOR IN CONTROL ROOM INSTRUCTING PRESENTER VARIOUS OF WOMAN ANSWERING PHONE CALLS WOMAN TALKING WITH TELEMEDIA CHAIRMAN JENO TOROCSIK IN CONTROL ROOM TOROCSIK LISTENING
- Embargoed: 27th January 2007 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Hungary
- Country: Hungary
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVA7Y59STCJAT7PQS5GVE1TO84W
- Story Text: A new genre of interactive television quiz shows are conquering Central Europe and the rest of the world. Young presenters show simple puzzles on the tv screen and then cheer and encourage viewers to make calls to high call rate numbers in the hope of winning money.
The same recipe is used in several languages in more than 40 countries, and they are all made by one Hungarian company, mostly in Budapest.
Production company Telemedia Interactv, produce call-in shows in Polish, Russian, Romanian, French, and various other languages all centralised in Budapest, where the company brings in young people from across the world and trains them in the new television style.
The company started 13 years ago. At first it only provided the phone-in services for other television shows such as 'Big Brother' and 'Wheel of Fortune'. But, four years ago founder and chairman of the company, Jeno Torocsik had the idea of creating something different.
A former mathematician, Torocsik set out to make a new model for the existing formats of phone-in television shows. The company began producing their own shows and was soon doubling its turn-over every year. Now it has become the leading television producer of quiz shows with more than 70 hours of live shows every day.
"At the moment Telemedia Interactv is the world's leading live quiz show producer. We produce the most interactive television quiz shows in the world, with more than 3,000 hours of live programmes per month," Torocsik said.
The business model is based on one location with one format.
The company trains presenters from several countries in several languages in ways to influence viewers so they keep calling.
Torocsik says that each gesture, background colour, how presenters say something and how many times they say it count. The company constantly analyses caller responses to the various styles and expressions.
"The essence of the success is the know-how. Not just the know-how of the programme production, but to know how we can make the viewers participate in the programme. Therefore we need two kinds of knowledge of programme making, one is to know how to make good quality TV programmes. The other is to know how to move the viewers over the phone. There are psychologists and mathematicians in our company, people who do not normally take part in a TV production. They all work with how we can motivate the viewers to be more and more active in our programmes," Torocsik said.
Depending on the market, Telemedia can get up to 100,000 calls per hour. The winners are selected by computers. Callers do not have to wait, but are told whether they get on air or not, and if they have the right answer they win.
Depending on the response from callers, the team of producers adjust games and the prizes to maximize the number of calls. One method they use is having the presenter pretend to be annoyed and angry with the viewers for not calling and not solving the puzzle. The producers says that in some countries, like Romania, the more aggressive behaviour seems to work.
When the show directors sense that the number of callers for a puzzle has peaked, a caller is selected and put through to the studio to try and solve the puzzle. If the caller fails to answer correctly, another caller is picked from the pool. Callers are charged whether or not they are selected and most only reach a recording machine, but many of them keep trying.
Some critics have called such shows a form of televised gambling. In Britain the industry has been criticised for making lotteries look like games of skill, particularly when the games or puzzles are easy to solve and therefore generate the maximum number of callers.
Winning such games is more a matter of chance than skill, British regulators argue, because the winning caller is picked randomly.
Torocsik say they are acting within the framework of EU regulations. He denies that their shows have anything to do with gambling saying it is a knowledge quiz.
The only European country with different rules is the Czech Republic, where any prize or payoff automatically counts as gambling.
Hungarian media critic, Ferenc Hammer, says the success of such shows in Central Europe stems from the era of post-communism. He said that the collapse of communism which meant the collapse of the familiar world, introducing an 'anything-can-happen mentality'.
The other reason for the spread of such shows across the world, Hammer says, is what he calls casino capitalism.
"This new capitalism is occasionally referred to as casino capitalism, because in the old capitalism work was important, but today it's more about once in a lifetime experiences. One only wins the jackpot once in a life. This mentality is not just in television shows, but also in real life, business and culture in terms of how success is viewed. Success just happens, one doesn't have to work for it. And all these factors contribute to the success of such quiz shows," Hammer said.
Telemedia studios operate around the clock. They air live Russian shows four times a day to reach all of Russia's time zones. Nigeria, Kenya and Cameroon were recently added to their small empire and they plan to begin broadcasting soon in India and the United States.
For television channels the attraction is obvious. Previously they had to pay for the productions, now Telemedia gives them ready made programmes and even pays them for the airtime. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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