Chess on TV

[Gordon Cadden]

Gozo of all places. With a registered address in Mayfair. Dreamland - even the Presenter looks too good to be true.

[NickFaulks]

See here for something interesting.

Is this something that's actually going to happen? Hard to tell.

[David Robertson]

Looks like a concept 'pitch' to prospective purchasers

[Stewart Reuben]

John, where did you find that?
I see it is an example of crowd-funding. Nothing wrong with that.
Clearly a lot of work has gone into the project.

[John Upham]

The Education part of the site shows a regular poster to this forum.

Maybe AR can enlighten us?

[Stewart Reuben]

This new initiative seems to have escaped posters notice.
CHECK MATE - TV SHOW
http://www.checkmate-show.com
A 10 player round robin has been set up with Anna Richardson as presenter. 10 quite well-known players, 5 male and 5 female.
The main shoot will be 13-22 October in Gozo to be released this winter.
The format is to be very similar to the old Master Game.
They are still looking for investors.
The problem of course is getting air time, preferably on terrestrial TV. Showing chess on the internet is common and fine, but that is preaching to the converted.
It is just pie in the sky to hope for there to be a British TV Channel devoted to chess. It is easier in the US because it is much cheaper.

Kevin Plant > During this weekend i will see if i can find them and convert them so i can put them on my site and post the link here<

Be careful, you may well be in breach of copyright. Series 6 and 7 of the Master Game were on Youtube (now you can buy them from the BFI). I think they may have obtained the material from me. I would have provided it, requiring a promise from the recipient that they would not breach the copyright. It was then passed on and another party did publish the material. The material was taken down. Sadly Series 1-5 are still not available and I do not have them.

I probably have the largest collection of chess material, either broadcast or from feature films, in the world. I am not including instructional material in my list. Yet I have none of the David Nixon programmes. I do not have all the programs broadcast in England on the 1986 KvK match.
I tried to find the link on the ECF to my catalogue, but failed. It would be out of date now anyway. I have 135 itemised discs, many lasting two hours.

Gavin there used to be on the internet a Swedish round up of the week's chess activities in English. The presenters were young females.
There used to be 'The Full English Breakfast', a similar production with Stephen Gordon and Lawrence Trent.

[John Upham]

This new initiative seems to have escaped posters notice.

Please take a look at your previous post in this thread.

John, where did you find that?
I see it is an example of crowd-funding. Nothing wrong with that.
Clearly a lot of work has gone into the project.

Perhaps I am not included in the set of posters?

[Stewart Reuben]

Another senior moment for me. I seem to have muddled up two threads.

[Adam Raoof]

It's happening!

The brochure is too large to upload here, but you should be able to access it via this link;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4pkz5jn6frdg ... 5.pdf?dl=0

[John Upham]

Allegedly 4,000,000 persons "participate" in chess in the UK.

keywords: out, plucked, air, the, of, figure, a

[Stewart Reuben]

There have been independent surveys done annually seeking to establish the popularity of different activities.
The relevant question asked of chess was, 'Have you played the game in the past three months? It certainly beats cricket and bridge for that one.
There is no doubt chess permeates our culture. Yesterday I watched 'The Trials of Jmmy Rose'. Ray Winstone sang to himself, 'That's Life'. 'I've been a pauper, ...a pawn or a queen'. In the first ad following there was people playing football. In the ad there was something said about chess.

If they asked the question, 'Have you ever played chess?'' I suspect the number would be higher than 4 million.

[John Upham]

I'm not convinced that seeing a program or advert en passant that includes chess would qualify as "participation".
Equally I might glance at a advert in a magazine for an investment fund that features chess but I have not "participated".

I saw an episode of "Bones" that included some terrible stereotypes about chess players but it didn't mean that I participated.

If a PR / marketing company hopes for these flights of fancy to be believed than the figures needs to be based on meaningful data not hope.

[Stewart Reuben]

I did not use the term 'participate' in what I wrote. You need to establish what is meant by the author by 'participate'.

[Ian Thompson]

If they asked the question, 'Have you ever played chess?'' I suspect the number would be higher than 4 million.

Elsewhere in the brochure it says:

"Most surprising is the percentage of adults who actually currently play chess (either weekly, monthly or during the past year): 12% in the United Kingdom"

That would mean about 5.7 million adults, plus an unknown number of children.

I'd like to see the underlying figures to justify the claim that 4 million people play chess and only 3 million play football. If playing chess casually counts then I would expect kick arounds in the park, with clothes for goalposts, to count for football. Would that really only give you 3 million football players?

[Roger de Coverly]

I'd like to see the underlying figures to justify the claim that 4 million people play chess and only 3 million play football.

This is believed to be the source material.
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/d ... 170712.pdf

The term "play chess" is undefined but presumably casual games are quite clearly included. In terms of a potential audience for a Master Game type show, the casual players are amongst them. In terms of numbers who take it seriously "as a sport", the head count of those taking part in graded or rated chess is a much better guide.

It would be far more enlightening, had the same questions been asked about a whole range of other activities. How would numbers stack up for Bridge and Poker for example, to say nothing of numerous computer games?