England’s “Accumulate!” Shows What You Can Do With a £60 Budget

There’s an indie British game show called Accumulate! that I felt like I should cover and I could never get the right angle.  If you’re in America you most likely haven’t seen it or heard it, but you should.  It’s an incredibly entertaining made for Reading University created by Dan Peake and Gary Male.  Most noticeable is that it’s incredibly entertaining for seriously a £60 budget.  Deal or No Deal couldn’t manage to stay very entertaining with a budget worth millions of more dollars.  Instead of me blathering on about it I wanted to let the host of the show, Dan Peake, write a guest blog post about their experience doing this.  It’s great inspiration for those of you who want to do small game shows in your universities or anywhere else.  Click here (or the logo) to watch an episode. It’s really fun and I hope you do check it out and tell us what you think.  I’m sure they’d value any feedback you have.  I wish people with the million dollar budgets could have the enthusiasm and passion for this stuff that Dan and Gary have.  The genre would be a lot better off.

In October 2008, a group of students started up Reading University Student Television. It’s a small society, 15 members or so, with almost no budget and no studio! To get some programming out, it was decided that a quiz show would be relatively easy, as there’s no script required and once you’ve got the contestants and questions, it pretty much makes itself.

I wasn’t actually part of RUST until then, when they’d heard that I was the go-to guy for gameshows, as I’ve been on 5 or 6 myself (and won no money, sadly). I was asked if I could come up with, and possibly host, a gameshow for student television. As it was for student television it had to be pretty short (it would only be online) and not too serious (as students wouldn’t watch it).

I teamed up with Gary Male, a fellow gameshow enthusiast/geek and the title actually came first, Accumulate! Then we thought each round could be based on the premise of Q1 is worth 1, Q2 is worth 2, Q3 is worth 3 and so on. We wanted one round to have some form of physical presence, and so we bought some cheap plastic cups and paper plates, and made towers, and the round made itself!

The members of the Exec liked the idea, and we made a small first season (4 shows) without any form of set with a blue wall as a back drop. The feedback we got from it was extremely positive and it got a great review at www.ukgameshows.com, and we’re now in the middle of our second season (7 shows) which has a set! ITV (a TV channel here in the UK) even contacted me to congratulate me on the success of the show. The total budget for seasons 2 and 3 (which we’re hoping to film in Spring 2010)
s £60 ($100). It just goes to show what you can do with a small budget!

Show 2×04 has just been released at www.ruon.org/ondemand , and it’s the last show before Christmas. The final 3 of the season will be broadcast in January. I’d love to know what readers think, as we’re always looking to make improvements to the show.

Dan Peake,
Host, Accumulate!