SBS Mastermind host Marc Fennell has seen contestants move from TV show to TV show, but thinks challenge is to maintain a steady flow of first time quizzers.
“There’s certainly a fairly tight knit group of quiz people, and they do bounce from show to show. You’ll see them on Hard Quiz, Mastermind and probably Tipping Point,” he told TV Tonight.
“I will watch Hard Quiz and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that was person was on a Mastermind season.’ When people come on Mastermind, (we ask) ‘What shows have you done and they’ll rattle them off. So there’s always going to be that group of people. But they are great because they generally know they’re doing.
“But the casting team work very hard to get people that have never been on TV before, and often Mastermind is their first experience. Then you go see them do Hard Quiz or Tipping Point or one of the other shows. I like that. I think that’s kind of good. I think it’s one of the purposes of the show.”
Fennell says Mastermind has also improved on the range of places where contestants are drawn from, particularly since the pandemic subsided.
“For the first season I took over, I’m pretty sure we only could take people from New South Wales. We couldn’t bring in people from Victoria. So now we’ve got people from coming in from WA or Adelaide. We had a whole family come in the other day,” he recalled.
“I mean, it’s a national show. We should be taking people from everywhere of course.”
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