University Challenge is a British quiz programme which first aired in 1962. University Challenge aired for 913 episodes on ITV from 21 September 1962 to 31 December 1987, presented by quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne. The BBC revived the programme on 21 September 1994 with Jeremy Paxman as the quizmaster.
The current title holders are the University of Edinburgh, who won the 48th series in 2019.
The show is produced by Granada Television (re-branded as ITV Studios in 2009), under licence from Richard Reid Productions and the College Bowl Company. It was recorded at Granada Studios in Manchester from its inception until the studios closed down in 2013; it is now recorded at dock10 in Salford.
Despite periodic changes to the sets, studio layout, and presentation, University Challenge has preserved a high level of continuity from 1962 to the present. Some commentators have cited this as an essential element of its success. Elements of this continuity include:
The programme had its beginnings in an American television quiz show called College Bowl. Cecil Bernstein, brother of Sidney Bernstein who founded Granada Television in 1954, had seen the programme in the United States and liked the format. It was decided that Granada would produce a similar programme with competing teams from universities across the United Kingdom. From its inception in 1962, University Challenge was hosted by Bamber Gascoigne. The show was a cult favourite with a small but loyal core audience, and was one of a select few ITV shows that were transmitted without any advertising breaks. Originally, the series started off in many areas, being broadcast at peak times or just after the nightly news around 10:30 pm; by the early 1970s, the series was relegated to irregular timeslots by the various ITV regional companies, appearing anywhere in the schedules; daytime, weekends, or even late at night. In the absence of a regular networked slot, audience figures would often fall, leading the producers to make changes to the long-standing format of the programme. In October 1983 LWT decided to stop broadcasting the series, with Thames following suit, which resulted in no broadcasts in the London area. The series was given a rest for the whole of 1985, before returning in April 1986, when it was finally networked by ITV and stripped across the weekday slot of 3pm. The gameplay was revised, initial games were staged over two legs; the first in the classic format and the second played as a relay, where contestants selected questions from specific categories such as sport, literature and science, passing a baton between players whenever a "lap" of two correct answers was scored. The final series was also networked, but broadcast around 11 am during the summer holiday period. Even so, the new networked time did little to save the series from the axe. The last ITV series was broadcast in 1987.
The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge could each enter as separate teams up to five of their constituent colleges, which are not themselves universities: they have far fewer students – numbering in the hundreds rather than thousands – than most universities. This was one ostensible inspiration for a 1975 protest, in which a team from the Victoria University of Manchester (which included David Aaronovitch) came second to Downing College, Cambridge, when they started a round by answering every question "Che Guevara", "Marx", "Trotsky" or "Lenin", in the hope of making the resulting show unbroadcastable.It did, however, get broadcast, although only portions of the episode still exist in the archives of Granada TV. Granada banned the University of Manchester for several years.
University Challenge was eventually revived in 1994 by the BBC, although still produced by Granada Television (now as part of the ITV Studios), using the original format with minor differences and presented by Jeremy Paxman.
During the shows hiatus, a special edition of the show was made, not by Granada but by BBC Television, as part of a themed evening of programmes dedicated to Granada Television. It was presented by Bamber Gascoigne, and screened on BBC2 on 28 December 1992. The teams included one of students from Keble College, Oxford, which had fielded the winning team in the final 1987 season; and a graduates team of celebrity alumni who had previously appeared on the programme as students, including journalist John Simpson and actor Stephen Fry. This show was preceded by a short documentary about the shows history. Bamber Gascoignes final appearance as host was in Universe Challenge in 1998 (see below).
The show has, since its revival in 1994, featured a number of teams of postgraduate and mature students, whose participation has been criticised. The Open University (OU) won the 1999 series with a team whose ages averaged 46. In the quarter-final, they narrowly beat a slightly younger team from part-time and mature student specialist Birkbeck, University of London. Birkbeck won the competition in 2003, also with a substantially mature team. Host Jeremy Paxman said that the OU team was not in the spirit of the competition. The team publicly replied by challenging him to specify in what way this was "contrary to the spirit of the quiz – or of the university".
In 2009, Sam Kay, part of the team from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was accused of not being a student when the show was filmed. Kay, who had completed a chemistry degree the previous summer, had been planning to go on to study for a Doctor of Philosophy, but he did not have sufficient funding so dropped out. He then became an accountant. The team, whose captain Gail Trimble was dubbed the "human Google", won the competition but was subsequently disqualified and the trophy awarded to the runners-up, the University of Manchester.
A few days later, it was also revealed that Charles Markland, a member of the 2008 winning team from Christ Church, Oxford, had transferred his studies to Balliol College halfway through the series. He said that his team captain had contacted a researcher concerning the situation, and had been told that this was not a problem and that the same team should be maintained for continuity purposes. It was also revealed that Freya McClements, captain of the 2004 winning team from Magdalen College, Oxford, was at the time studying at Trinity College, Dublin. Although it was mentioned in a BBC news story at the time, no action was taken because the BBC stated that the facts had not been brought to their attention.
In 2016, at the Henley Literary Festival, Jeremy Paxman revealed that, when students were unable to answer several consecutive starter questions, those questions were often deleted before the show is broadcast. He explained that this was done to make a better programme and because "you as a taxpayer do not want to think your money is being wasted."
Teams consist of four members and most represent a single university. The exceptions to this are colleges of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, which enter independent teams. While a number of other British universities have constituent colleges, only those where some teaching is undertaken at the college-level may enter independent teams. The competing teams each year are selected by the shows producers, based both on scores from a general trivia quiz and the producers judging of the suitability of the teams for television.Durham University has appeared most frequently in the post-1994 format.
The current tournament format used for each series is that of a direct knockout tournament starting with 28 teams. The 14 first-round winners progress directly to the last 16. Two matches, involving the four highest scoring losing teams from the first round, whose losing scores often exceed winning scores in other first-round matches, fill the remaining places in the last 16. Teams in the quarter-final round (last 8 teams) have to win two matches in the round to progress to the semi-finals. Equally, teams must lose two quarter-final matches in order to be eliminated from that round. The pairings for matches are often chosen in order to keep stronger teams apart.
Starter questions are answered individually and are worth 10 points. The catchphrase "Your starter for 10" inspired David Nicholls 2003 novel Starter for Ten and the 2006 film based on it starring James McAvoy. An incorrect interruption of a starter results in a 5-point penalty (during the Gascoigne era, this took the form of 5 points awarded to the opposing team; currently, 5 points are deducted from the interrupting team).
The team answering a starter correctly gets a set of three bonus questions worth a potential 15 points, for which they can confer. Sets of bonus questions are thematically linked, although, apart from picture and music bonus questions, they rarely share a connection with the preceding starter question. Generally, there are three separate bonus questions worth 5 points each, but occasionally a bonus will require the enumeration of a given list with 5, 10 or 15 points given for correctly giving a certain number of items from the list (for example, "there are seven fundamental SI units. Give 5 for 5 points, 6 for 10 points or all 7 for 15 points"). It is the team captains responsibility to give the answer to the bonus questions unless another member of the team is specified with the phrase "Nominate [name]". The team member so named may then give the answer instead.
In the course of a game there are two picture rounds (occurring roughly one quarter and three quarters of the way through) and one music round (at the halfway point), where the subsequent bonuses are connected thematically to the starter; if a picture or music starter is not correctly answered, the accompanying bonus questions are held back until a normal starter is correctly answered. Usually, in the recent contests, the first picture round focuses on science and technology, geography, and languages, while the second picture round centres about art, film, television, and literature. The 2010 Manchester University team included a visually impaired student, Rachael Neiman, and the picture rounds in episodes involving the team were word puzzles for which she was provided with Braille transcriptions. Pieces of music played for the music round may be classical or popular – for example, on 25 July 2011, the pieces played were winners of the Eurovision Song Contest. Occasionally, audio clips other than music (e.g. speech, animal sounds or other field recordings) are used.
The pace of questioning gradually increases through the show. The sound of a gong signals the end of the game. At this point, the game immediately ends, even if Paxman is halfway through asking a question. In the event of a tied score at the sound of the gong, a sudden death question is asked, the first team to answer correctly being deemed the winner; this is repeated until one or other of the teams answers correctly, or a team loses by giving an incorrect interruption. The ending of the programme is usually signified with Jeremy Paxman saying "Its goodbye from (name of losing team, who say goodbye), its goodbye from (winning team, likewise), and its goodbye from me: goodbye!" However, in the final episode of the seasons, Paxman ends the show with "Its goodbye from (name of the seasons winner, who wave and say goodbye), and its goodbye from me: goodbye!"
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