Will there be more online shows?

Are online game shows a good career bet going forward?

A few months ago on these pages we looked at how today's stand-ups could take a modern approach to the classic old comedian career path - getting a game show. That was the TV dream for a lot of acts in previous decades, but it remained just a dream for most, given that there were only three channels making shows back then. Slim pickings.

Three channels until 1982, that is. Then Channel 4 arrived and gave us Countdown, but it was hosted for 23 years by a news presenter, Richard Whiteley. When he finally stepped down they went with a former football anchorman, Des Lynam, but eventually did the decent thing and hired a different Des: O'Connor, the Morecambe & Wise favourite. As for Channel 5 - launched in 1997 - their original game show was 100%, whose gimmick was that there was no host at all. Great!

It's a different playing field nowadays. The internet has made life a lot more interactive, and many people would rather play at an online casino than watch random punters compete for prizes on TV (although multi-screen is obviously the way many of us consume our media these days, watching TV with a phone close to hand. And that behaviour apparently now affects the way scripted shows are made - more regular exposition to re-explain the plot for anyone who missed it while checking their messages).

So you wouldn't be surprised if the lines continue to blur between TV shows and web content, with some familiar faces - and voices - fronting online games in the near future. Comics do currently seem the go-to people to front ads, from high-profile lotteries to online casinos. Why not go the whole hog and host a proper show off the back of it?

As technology moves on you can imagine a perfectly good online game show being made remotely, the host and contestants all in their own homes - and a lot of comedians are now particularly adept at this sort of thing. The really significant shift happened almost exactly five years ago, in fact.

As soon as it became clear that the first Covid lockdown was going to last a lot longer than a couple of weeks, and live gigs weren't returning anytime soon, comics from all sorts of different backgrounds and skill-sets suddenly took an interest in tech, ordered a bunch of green screens and camera kit online and started creating their own shows from home.

Some highly impressive multi-person formats popped up, often featuring guests, sometimes also whole audiences, all individually beaming in from their own homes. Ironically, some of those comics found wider fame from these shows than from the original live work they were replacing. So, fronting a virtual game show wouldn't be a huge stretch - and it makes a change from driving halfway across the country to perform for people.

It's another string to their bow, which is always important for everyday working comics. Zoom became so ubiquitous during the lockdowns that a lot of talk radio stations have become quasi TV channels, with every guest on screen - so if you have a good set-up, you're likely to get more work. Good jokes are still important, but nowadays a solid Wi-Fi connection is absolutely essential.