Late Night Intellectuals

For those who aren't regularly up and watching television after midnight, it might be news that every commercial network now airs a late night quiz show where people make expensive phonecalls to get an opportunity to answer lame questions and win amounts of money between $50 and $1000 odd.

It all started with Big Brother Up Late, which needed something for people to watch when housemates were asleep. This then became The Up Late Gameshow with Simon "Hotdogs" Deering (BB05 housemate - the one who got busted getting a blowjob in public).

The other networks were slow to respond to this money grabbing manipulation of a ratings-irrelevant viewing period, but since the end of this year's Big Brother Up Late (which presumably dominates the ratings at that hour), they have introduced Quizmania (on Nein) and Midnight Zoo (Seven).

Anyway, I don't need to go into detail about how bad they are, especially since someone else has already done it, but I thought I'd share a special moment from Quizmania.

The challenge was to come up with words that go with the word 'High' to form a composite word, or phrase.

"So what's your answer?" asks the host.

"Um... is it Hygiene?"

And yet people are petitioning to get these shows off air. For shame!