The Money Programme looks at the burgeoning global video games market. The release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Megadrive - which has become the fastest-selling game of all time, and looks set to become the highest-grossing entertainment product of 1992 - has demonstrated that games are capable of usurping the sales of the traditional record industry. Is the entertainment market big enough to accommodate this electronic hedgehog and his video game kin, or will the success of electronic games inevitably lead to sales of other media dwindling? Peter Wilson-Smith asks Nick Alexander of Sega, business analyst Sophia Bergqvist, John Laidlaw of Our Price, Damage Management's Ed Bicknell, Gamesmaster presenter Dominik Diamond and BMG Chairman John Preston; will video games kill the radio star? Originally broadcast 29 November 1992.
I think they had this hosted on the BBC's own website for a while (aka I've seen this before), but it's always fun to see how rigid daytime TV presenting styles were back in 1992. Mind you it's no surprise the music market was "stagnating". Have you ever heard a UK chart from 1992 - not the top 10, the top 40 - there's so many cheesy dance tracks, most with kids wanting to be the next 2 Unlimited or Snap. There's a reason Britpop became a thing. I mean okay I prefer the early 90s to Oasis and Blur but I'm weird.
Yes, this item has already been available on the BBC Archive website for a pretty long time now. Their entire "Gaming" collection of footage is naturally a bit of an underappreciated goldmine - in the way of Sega alone, they've also got coverage of the launch of SegaWorld London and the Dreamcast on there. Hopefully they'll put more of these up on that channel too, although with the Beeb's vast archive (at least, after they stopped wiping stuff regularly in the 1970s), video games are probably pretty low on the totem pole for them. The editors weren't exactly helping the British music industry's case by sticking a clip of "Supersonic" on at the end, a number 33 smash hit and of course one of several cheap video game cash-in singles in the charts at the end of 1992. Still probably better than the Oasis song of the same name though.
It's so dumb... It's my new favourite song. Sorry It Doesn't Matter, this is the new, true theme of Sonic.
They're not even on the pole - the story goes that the BBC sees video games as a rival to the medium of television, so avoids giving it screen time. They do exactly the same with films (or specifically "things currently being shown at the cinema"). Their long running (television) film show had to fight for screen time (it spent its later days in the 11:30pm slot before being axed completely) and on radio, the Mark Kermode/Simon Mayo review thing on 5 Live has been downgraded to a podcast. Actually one surprising thing here is they call it "video games" and not "computer games". Given I still encounter this regularly (the effect of home micros being the dominant gaming force in the 1980s), it's very forward thinking.
When I first read that, I thought it referring to the J.J. Fad song. I feel silly. Amazing to know this all exists.
It's telling that they never did have any video game-related programming to compete with ITV + C4's runaway successes in the 90s. Kids likely would have lapped old any old crap to do with them - Games World rated very well on Sky One too, and that was just laughably cheap a lot of the time. To give a bit of credit, they did eventually allow a homegrown success, Consolevania, its own little ghetto on BBC Two as Videogaiden. Although even then only in Scotland.
It was pretty minimal, but they did have a games section on Going Live! on Saturday mornings. Here's their coverage of Sonic 2's release.
Even that only lasted a few months, as it was the last series of Going Live! and the feature simply tied into its expensive new Virtuality-inspired titles. Live & Kicking certainly didn't carry it over upon the first series that following September. Having said that - Hamleys, particularly the Sega-associated areas of it, was seemingly a convenient filming location for the BBC around that time, as they were also used in The O Zone.
They still had a games section on Live & Kicking; Season 1 (93.10.02 - 94.04.16) "Ratz Chip Shop" Season 2 (94.09.24 - 95.04.15) "Electric Circus" Season 3 (95.09.23 - 96.04.13) Ben Keyworth (Ben the Boffin from The Big Breakfast's games section) Season 4 (96.09.21 - 97.04.19) ??? Season 5 (97.09.27 - 98.04.18) "The Ay Files" (Adem Ay) Season 6 (98.09.26 - 99.04.17) "J:\Drive" (Jamie Theakston) Season 7 (99.09.25 - 00.04.15) ??? Season 8 (00.10.07 - 01.09.15) ??? Last two seasons seem to have dropped video game sections, but some episodes had Dreamcasts as prizes, this one featured someone in a Sonic costume appearing throughout the episode with viewers calling in to win a Dreamcast store display unit amongst other Sega goodies. Not that it was ever up to much, but still worth documenting for any rare footage.
Definitely informative. Really illustrates some insights that the US market was not quite as intelligent about and that the Rockstar dream was dying well before Napster. I also see how Sega was quite a bit better about marketing in Europe. Also never heard that song, and agree I want to hear the full version. I typically associate those dance sounds with the Saturn era of Sega but at least in the UK you can apparently trace it back to Sonic 2 at least.
I've seen some full episodes of Live & Kicking in relatively recent years, and can honestly say I have no memory whatsoever of this - goes to show how they were given even shorter shrift on it, in any case, not what people remember the show for. Wouldn't be surprised if ITV gave even more video games coverage on their competing programmes in the same Saturday morning timeslot too, though as they were generally less popular than the BBC's offering at that time I don't expect much uploaded footage.
Yeah, it's said that ITV's childrens programmes went downhill after the 1993 franchise changes. It does seem that "Gimme 5" on ITV had some games coverage, but as you said, very little footage has been uploaded. Violet Berlin did have a weekly section on GMTV called "Bits & Bytes" (She also had a Bad Influence spin-off on TCC), but there doesn't seem to be any footage of that.
