By now you’ve heard about Channel Seven’s Big Music Quiz. Maybe you’ve read one of the many atrocious reviews it’s received or you’ve been misfortunate enough to actually catch a snippet whilst flicking through the channels.
But in addition to being labelled a cross between one of those “late night, cheap as chips, dial-in shows” circa 2006 and “a pub quiz”, according to one of the show’s recent panelists, things are also something of a mess behind the scenes.
“They do two sessions a day so a lot of people have their session in the afternoon, ours was in the morning. You have to be on set at 9am and… they’re telling us what it’s about and what we have to do,” KIIS FM’s Jackie O recently recounted, via News Corp.
“The producer addressed the group of celebrity contestants and said, ‘All the other guys have been having so much fun with this. Every time you guys get an answer right you have to get up and dance.’ And we were like, ‘Oh, dance at 9 o’clock in the morning, really?’”
“No one was really vibing on it.” The fact that the contestants get up and dance at seemingly every minor occurrence has been a point of criticism for many, but apparently the producers of the show think the show’s only problem is that there’s not enough dancing.
“We weren’t really dancing like they wanted us to and they kept saying, ‘Come on guys, the other guys were having so much fun with it, just get up and dance’,” Jackie O explained. “You really felt forced to get up and dance.”
Concerned that Ms O and fellow panelists Anthony Albanese, Rachael Beck, Ella Hooper, and Matthew Mitcham weren’t dancing enough or having enough fun (mainly the dancing thing though), the producers decided to start feeding them booze.
“I think they were getting a bit frustrated with us, we weren’t getting into it as much as they would have liked,” said the radio host. “So in between commercial breaks they would bring out coffee mugs with wine in it.”
Apparently the producers have forgotten what makes shows like Spicks & Specks and RockWiz great and that’s the chemistry between hosts and panelists and unique segments, not going for ‘maximum fun’ by making everything big, loud, and over the top.
