The Simon Tonekham Statesman

I was reading some information the other day about a now-defunct TV show that was aired on the E! Network in Canada called PopQ. The show is hosted by Jason Agnew (who you many know from Brain Battle, which aired on the Global Television Network) and for a brief time, Stacey Englehart co-hosted the program.

PopQ is an interactive game show in which viewers at home can be contestants. They can dial a 1-900 number ($1.99CDN per call), text into the show using their cell phone ($2CDN per text) and even can enter for free online via the website. The 10th person that qualifies gets to have their phone numbers thrown into a “pool” and during the entire duration of the program, the producers of the show will randomly call back to one of the numbers drawn in that pool to qualify to get the call back in the air and provides a response on a chance to win a cash prize.

PopQ is an interactive game show that: “brings viewers a mix of celebrity gossip and news bites as well as exciting and smart games that can make quiz candidates rich instantly! Viewers will have the chance to play Question of the Day — a fun, up-to-the minute, multiple choice word game, or test their skills on Scramble — a celebrity-themed anagram, or find out what famous person’s picture lies behind the hatches in Who Is It? Viewers will hear the latest juicy tidbits about their favourite stars and all the dirt on celebs they love to trash!”

However, there was one incident that might have lead to it’s cancellation. It’s all aired live on national TV. During the commercial break, a viewer had called in with an answer, “The Bucket List” (which was one of the names of the movies from the topic, “Movies that start with the letter B”. As the show was going into a commercial break, Stacey Englehart could be audible when she said, “Bitch starts with a B also” followed with this statement: “yeah, Bucket starts with a B, good observation”.

With everything goes out of hand, Jason Agnew then informs Englehart that to fight with against the callers because of her racial statement and without incident, the show was back on. After the show was cancelled, Stacey Englehart was informed that she was completed fired (sacked, canned, terminated) from the program.

To my contrary opinion, is this most likely the cause of the show being cancelled? Only someone out there will tell.

Although this issue is not so serious than the Stacey Englehart incident, a Winona resident by the name of Bev Tronar had received a massive amount of phone calls from strangers who insisted they really know the answer and wanted to retrieve (collect) their prize. As a result, she didn’t got a telephone call returned from the network representatives at CanWest Mediaworks.

This is what Tronar has quoted in an interview: ““The phone number used by the show is only one digit different than my home phone number here in the 905 area code, From the first day I have had dozens of wrong number calls to my home between 1 and 2 p.m. each day. Imagine my surprise the first day when dozens of people called me to say they knew the answer! David Letterman was the guest on Oprah Winfrey! I called the Hamilton station, which referred me to CanWest, the producers of this show. I was told they would look into the problem, but so far nothing has been done. I am no longer getting a response to my messages or e-mails.”

Keeping her sense of humour, she was able to observe the phone calls being made by other people. According to a representative at Canwest, they have taken the drastic steps to their programming department and the show producers at a company called Pyman Productions.

Will Brain Battle will suffer the same fate as PopQ? We’ll see. Enjoy those PopQ clips:

PopQ 1:

PopQ 2:

PopQ 3:

References:

“E! Hamilton’s PopQ gets its wires crossed.” Hamilton Spectator. 4 October 2007. 17 May 2007. <http://www.thespec.com/article/258965>