In a double weekend focus on the latest trends in television, Audrey Stuart reports that the craze for not-too-smart game shows is still on a roll worldwide with no sign of slacking off.

  Kids parenting adults, dumbed-down game shows with a family theme, and the inevitable sprinkling of sex are shaping up as the new TV hits in coming months.
   The craze for not-too-smart game shows sparked by the phenomenal US success of  "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" is still on a roll worldwide with no
sign of slacking off, according to Virginia Mouseler, who heads up the TV
market tracking and research agency, The Wit.
   But strategy or just plain luck are more important than brains or general
knowledge in the new slew of games being snapped up by thousands of TV buyers in Cannes for the five-day MIPTV trade fair.
   The latest trend are simple family-centred shows that "turn our memories
into cash", Mouseler said.




   The answer to taking home cash prizes from US "Amne$sia" or Argentina's
"Love or for Money" is pretty simple homework -- key dates in a family's
history, the name of the mother-in-law's cat, a best friend's middle name or a
wife's ring size.
   The family too is due to hit the dance-floor, with mums and dads and
daughters and sons set to turn the tables on the celebrities who until now
have hogged the limelight in smash hit TV dance competitions such as Britain's
"Strictly Come Dancing" or "Dancing with the Stars".
   In "Your Mama Don't Dance", which recently premiered on US cable channel
Lifetime, 10 young professional dancers pair off with their novice mother or
father and face the uphill task of teaching slick dance routines to far from
fleet-footed parents in front of judges and TV viewers.
   And dancing is just one aspect of the challenge, with family relationships
and emotions also coming into play.
   This trend to kid-power is generally on the rise on small screens, Mouseler
said.



   In the BBC's "The Smoke House", a group of children who hate cigarettes
take on the challenge of helping parents kick the habit, laying down tough
regimes to help them get clean.
   Kids too are the stars in a Japanese TV hit aired recently in Italy called
"Mi Raccomando" (Old Enough) in which six-year-olds prove they are old enough
for more responsibility by performing tasks such as going to the nearby
pharmacy to buy the right medicine.
   On the sex appeal front, Spain's "The Calendar of the Year", which has
teams of ordinary people such as policemen, housewives and athletes competing
to star in a sexy calendar, is set to keep pulses racing.
   Giving seduction a more emotional and homely side, FreemantleMedia's "The
Prettiest Girl In Class", which was aired recently in The Netherlands to great
ratings, was proving popular with buyers this week.
   The feel-good show based on a 20-year school picture appeals to a wide
audience as everyone wonders what happened to their prettiest girl, Mouseler
noted.
   The taste for green-themed programmes is now also affecting game shows,
with Scandinavian countries leading the way. In "Kraftajet" (The Power Play')
for instance, two cities compete against each other to reduce their CO2
emissions.
   But the newest twist in game show production is the weird and wonderful.
   Famous rock stars help senior citizens form a rock'n'roll choir that
performs to a sold-out theatre in Finland's "K-70" (Born to be Wild).
   Employees in companies worldwide take up the challenge of learning a song
and dance routine in just two days in "the Singing Office".
   And the biggest international hit of all looks like being Japan's "Hole In
The Wall" that FreemantleMedia is selling around the world.
   In this show, silver Spandex-clad contestants contort their bodies to jump
through different-shaped holes in a wall that speeds towards them, or get
knocked into a swimming pool. The simple things often work best, the experts
said.

AFP 

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