Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Game On
- 1 Genre and the Quiz Show
- 2 Quiz Show Histories
- 3 Quiz Show Theory: Approaching the Programme Text
- 4 Knowledge in the Quiz Show
- 5 The Quiz Show and ‘Ordinary’ People as Television Performers
- 6 ‘Asking the Audience’: Quiz Shows and Their viewers
- Conclusion: ‘Not the Final Answer…’
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - ‘Asking the Audience’: Quiz Shows and Their viewers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Game On
- 1 Genre and the Quiz Show
- 2 Quiz Show Histories
- 3 Quiz Show Theory: Approaching the Programme Text
- 4 Knowledge in the Quiz Show
- 5 The Quiz Show and ‘Ordinary’ People as Television Performers
- 6 ‘Asking the Audience’: Quiz Shows and Their viewers
- Conclusion: ‘Not the Final Answer…’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Intelligent without being too highbrow; stimulating because one can try to answer questions; instructive when one can't.
(BBC viewer talking about What Do You Know?, 1959)A good quiz compere will manage to get some personal info [about a contestant] that is interesting to all out in the public domain. Aligned with a good programme editor, you will get [aspects of] … personal ‘colour’ which paints the canvas of the quiz.
(Posted by mquiz, quizzing.co.uk, 2002)It's those Most Embarrassing Moment stories that … get on my nerves. I reckon a good proportion of them are fictitious – mine was. Anyone else like to come clean?
(Posted by kvm irving, quizzing.co.uk, 2005)These responses offer fleeting insights into audience, as well as contestant, relationships with quiz shows. Although academics and press critics also provide evidence of quiz show ‘reception’, audience responses have been all but invisible in academic work on the genre. This is despite the fact that quiz shows might be described as one of the more obvious sites for audience research. Many shows are designed to encourage us to ‘play along’ while viewing, and quiz formats often encode the participatory presence of the viewer into the text itself. Furthermore, in sometimes appearing as contestants and players, quiz show viewers can be visible on screen. The idea of audience visibility has also taken on new connotations with the advent of the internet.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Quiz Show , pp. 140 - 161Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2008