Question Time

The title is a reference to a long-running BBC program, where six people (the chairperson, 3 to 4 major politicians and one or two public figures - comedians, journalists etc), sit on a panel in front of an audience (and sometimes live on TV). The audience provide questions to the panel related to news items on that day and wait for a response (and the debate amongst them which ensues), and can then contribute and question what an individual has said (as well as clap and jeer, naturally). A better explanation might be the Wiki article, you'd have to search for it though as the url is broken here.

My question is, do you have anything similar in the US, and would this work/would you want to watch it? I'm under the impression that the ability for the public to directly question top politicians (Cabinet ministers in the serving and opposition governments), and them have to answer and debate live and under pressure is relatively unique, but I can't really see why. It's entertaining, informative and revealing.

To tell you the truth, I don't think we have anything like this, nor do I think would it have any success in the U.S. I personally looked up a few episodes and learned a lot of new information. I think the College students and the politically active might find this useful, but in the U.S. there seems to be a different mind set. People might possibly view this as a "political Jerry springer-without the violence". The U.s. audience would choose a cartoon or a lame reality show over this educational television show. I would quite support this if the idea would ever come to the States, but I'm not sure who else would. It could be the case where it is exciting in the first year or so, but then it dies down and is eventually canceled.

Apart from history, I could only think of two television shows that started in the UK and caught on with the U.S (The Office and Who's Line Is It Anyway?), of course these are just at the top of my head and there quite possibly is more than those shows.

American Idol, America's Got Talent, The Daily Show is based on an old one called Not The Nine O'Clock News, Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, Dancing With The Stars, Junkyard Wars, Trigger Happy TV (which you fucked up :P), The Weakest Link, Who Wants To Be a Millionare, Wife Swap, Life on Mars (also fucked up), Eleventh Hour (fucked up again) - are ones I can think of. Probably a lot of other absolute rubbish, but I appreciate there is a culture gap on top of the nautical one.

What you've said there is interesting though; I'd have thought that considering the charged political climate most of the time, but especially at the moment with healthcare reform, Palin, even Glenn Beck, the American public might like to put issues that affect them straight to the upper echelons. I appreciate that the system and size of government and parties doesn't suit it as well as it does here, but the reason it's been going in the UK since the 70's is that while a relatively small proportion of people are highly interested in politics, there are still big issues with schools, the army or whatever it is at the time that people are concerned about and want answers to. It's a solution to the cleverly crafted replies and deception in the general media, or it tries to be.

Reminds me of an article I read in the Chicago Tribune a while back, too, saw it entirely by chance. If you have some time spare, look for episodes on torrents, youtube etc, because it's a brilliant program (which has spawned NYT best-sellers in the US, under different names). Would again be interesting to see if the public at large would like it. :)

Thank you for telling us what type of shows we fucked up(:|), but I don't watch much television, nor do I have cable/satellite TV, so I wouldn't have known that many.

Yes, I'll probably end up catching a few episodes here and there (the 1st one I saw was about the NBP!), but what I've seen is fantastic. This could actually be used in an academic sense, but I doubt it would ever air in prime time. Probably some channel like PBS where they concentrate on more educational things...