The Rise And Fall Of Most Haunted - by Liam R
I don’t I have the time to research the exact moment it happened, but over the last few years I have noticed an increasing uptake in the number of cases of “build ‘em up, knock ‘em down” disease. The most famous example I can think of is Jade Goody, who took looks that only a mother could love and barely negligible intelligence and made herself a million pounds at yet the public and the media seem to take unparalleled glee in knocking the poor girl. Yes, I fully realise that I too have been guilty of ripping into Ms Goody, and in fact my weekly column ‘The Hit Parade’ seems to solely exist to fit in to this “build ‘em up, knock ‘em down” mentality. An entire industry has also sprung up around this idea, led somewhat horrendously by Heat magazine and its ilk and quite frankly it’s all getting a bit too much. So where exactly does this tie in to Most Haunted? Let me explain…
Most of my readers found this site thanks to my reviews of Most Haunted Live where I would gleefully poke fun at the team’s appearance and the sheer mind numbing stupidity of the whole shebang. And as I only started doing the reviews properly in 2005-ish where the show started rapidly going down the shitter, most people have only seen what later, incredibly stupid shows Antix produced whereas back in the day the show wasn’t that bad. In fact, what nowadays is a show that has gone past self-parody and turned into an awful, mind-numbing exercise in tedium used to be a fairly decent, sensible and relatively serious look into the paranormal. This article hopefully will show how Most Haunted Live went from 1 million a viewers a night in a 2004 Live Special to barely scraping a quarter of that number in 2007, with looks at the fakery and deceit which have blighted the show. I’ll also point out that all the nonsense that has plagued the show was totally self-inflicted due to two catastrophic nights which marked both the high point and the beginning of the show’s decline. So make yourself a beverage of choice, get yourself comfortable or even print this out, it’s going to be a long one…
Introductions, Etc.
No classical drama would be complete without characters and so we had better bring you all up to speed on just who is who in the Most Haunted universe:
Living TV: Principle broadcaster of Most Haunted and its spin-offs. Back in 2000, it was (probably) decided in meetings that Living TV needed some sort of gimmick to make it stick out from the glut of satellite channels that were starting to spring up. It had already changed its name from UK Living to plain old Living to distance itself from the likes of UK Gold etc. but it had developed a small and developing niche amongst the female demographic.
Antix Productions: TV production company formed by Yvette Fielding and her husband Karl Beattie. Most notable for producing Most Haunted and its spin-offs… and not much else.
Yvette Fielding: Former Blue Peter presenter, now creator and producer of Most Haunted.
Karl Beattie: Fielding’s husband, producer of Most Haunted.
Cath Howe: Make-up artist & stylist since the Dudley Live. Claims to also work on Coronation Street.
Stuart Torevell: Rigger and cameraman.
Derek Acorah: Former professional footballer turned psychic medium.
David Wells: Astrologer turned medium
Richard Felix: Unqualified historian
Leslie Smith: Historian who also moonlights as Mary Queen Of Scots amongst others.
David Bull: Doctor turned TV presenter.
Julian Clegg: No idea turned quasi-TV presenter.
Matthew Smith: Parapsychologist turned pantomime villain.
Ciaran O’Keeffe: Parapsychologist.
Others will turn up in due course but these are your main characters so with the introductions out of the way, let's get our little tale started shall we?
Act One: The Beginning
Actual demonstrations of exorcisms and occult practices, such as those involving the purported invocation of unknown spirits of the dead or negative forces, are not acceptable in non-fictional programming except in the context of a legitimate investigation. They should not, in any case, be shown before the watershed.
Demonstrations of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and similar practices are acceptable only when they are clearly and explicitly presented as entertainment, or when they are the subject of legitimate investigation. Programmes should not be included at times when significant numbers of children are expected to be watching: for example, before the watershed on public service channels. When presented for entertainment purposes, measures should include announcements before and at the end of programmes to indicate their nature as entertainment, and appropriate acknowledgement of the existence of differing opinions as to the true nature of clairaudience and clairvoyance. Programmes should not include specific advice to particular contributors or viewers about health or medical matters, the law or personal finance or include specific advice which might significantly influence behaviour in relation to personal relationships. They should not include advice which might be damaging or unduly distressing to those concerned or which might unduly disconcert the likely audience.
Demonstrations of predictive practices, whether 'psychic' or otherwise (eg horoscopes, palmistry), are acceptable only when they are presented as entertainment or are the subject of legitimate investigation. They should not include specific advice to particular contributors or viewers about health or medical matters or about personal finance. They should not be included at times when large numbers of children are expected to be watching.
Fiction programmes containing 'psychic' or occult phenomena should not normally be scheduled before the watershed, although a fantasy context, for example, may justify such a scheduling. - OFCOM Broadcasting regulations
So many great stories generally start by introducing the principle players one at a time, and this will be no exception. In fact to begin with our story doesn't even concern Living TV at all but a now defunct channel called Granada Breeze. Breeze was, how to put it, fucking terrible, a horrendous assortment of poorly produced lifestyle shows aimed straight at women. It had at one point been four different lifestyle segments rolling under one channel but was soon merged into one. One thing Granada Breeze did do though was start broadcasting programs with a paranormal edge to them, one of which happened to feature Derek Acorah, who at this point was remembered only in Liverpool as Derek Johnson, a so-so footballer who never quite made the grade at Anfield. Now I have watched some of the segments that Derek did for the channel and one thing that can't be doubted is both his enthusiasm and showmanship, and given what would come later those are both perhaps his strongest attributes which have perhaps saved his career from the shit which would subsequently hit the fan. However in the early part of the 21st Century, just as Breeze was starting to be squeezed out by the burgeoning digital TV explosion caused by ITV's failed Digital service, Derek was slowly but surely starting to get himself quite the fan base. No doubt Living was taking notes about not only Derek's charisma but on the small scale success that a show like that had.
It should also be noted that up until the widespread growth of satellite television in the late 90s, most programmes dedicated to psychics and the occult had been banished either to the depths of TV schedules due to the above mentioned OFCOM regulations or as one-off segments on day time lifestyle magazine shows like This Morning. So when Breeze decided to give some of its airtime to what essentially boiled down to an Oprah Winfrey clone with a psychic medium, it was something very different to what most people had seen on TV before. It goes without saying of course that some people would have scoffed at the sheer ludicrous nature of someone claiming to be able to talk to the dead whereas others would no doubt been truly converted to believers. All this was a moot point due to Breeze's small audience, which may have in turn been boosted somewhat by the arrival of ITV Digital on the scene, thereby massively increasing the potential audience to its shows due to their over-the-air digital services. The inevitable collapse of ITV Digital due to the ridiculously over-inflated contract it signed with the Football League would no doubt have sounded the death knell to Breeze as its potential audience and advertising revenues shrunk overnight. By March 2002, less than 8 years after it first started broadcasting, Breeze was taken off the air and Derek Acorah was seemingly cast into limbo.
The collapse of ITV Digital would no doubt have forced Living TV to have a long look at itself. Living had always aimed itself at the same demographic that Breeze had, and as such in 2002 they too started broadcasting programmes with a paranormal edge to them. Again, whether this was a conscious decision made after seeing the small scale success that Breeze had had with its Acorah fronted shows is entirely speculation, but in the desperate grab for viewers after the collapse they needed a niche to exploit and it seems that the paranormal was the way forward. The first show that made its way across was 'Crossing Over With John Edward' a bigger budgeted version of the same shows that Breeze had made with Acorah. It was a moderate success, pulling in three of Living TV's highest ratings for the week ending the 7th April 2002 [source: http://www.barb.co.uk] but along with US import Charmed (which took the highest rating in that week) it showed that Living's decision to go with the paranormal and away from the trashy American talk shows like Jerry Springer was vindicated. However, something was afoot to do something radically different from the psychic chat show format that the channel had adopted. With an audience averaging around 200,000 viewers Living knew that something different yet along those same paranormal lines was needed, and Antix Productions were just the ones to provide it.
Act Two, Scene One: Showtime!
I was hooked from the start, totally believing it and I couldn’t get enough of it. I was gob-smacked with the events of Pendle Hill and thought "Wow, it won't be long before we get a full body apparition on the show".
And so it came to pass that at half past eight on Sunday the 26 th May 2002 that the very first episode of Most Haunted was broadcast as a lead in to Living TV’s showing of the movie ‘Ghost’. It pulled in a respectable 230,000 viewers but was beaten by the following movie, The Osbournes on MTV and pretty much everything on Sky One. Perhaps more surprising was that the show managed to add 33% of the viewers of its own lead in, an episode of ‘Crossing Over With John Edward’. Still, the following week it settled in to its traditional Tuesday slot and vied with ‘Charmed’ for top rated show on the channel so in it’s early days it can be said that the show was a huge success. Even its Sunday night replay would feature in the Top Ten highest rated shows, and even more remarkable was that for the week ending the 30 th June 2002, that week’s episode from Leap Castle in County Offaly were the second and third highest rated shows that week.
Most Haunted’s initial success shouldn’t really be considered a surprise. The premise of the show was very simple: Yvette Fielding and a camera crew would accompany parapsychologist Jason Karl and psychic medium around supposed haunted locations for 24 hours and slice the resulting footage into a half hour show. The first part would be conducted in daylight and took the form of a historical look into the various properties they were investigating, as well as Acorah coming up with any spirits that may have been present at the time. The second half would be the team splitting up in the dark and filming various rooms in the hope of catching paranormal activity, and to be brutally honest it worked like a charm. Believers would see any orbs, lights or apparent movement as proof positive of spirit existence, skeptics would point out that Derek was making it up as he went along and that it was more a psychological look into how fear can spread in dark, unfamiliar locations. So with a little something for everyone, the show was a hit and the most important thing to remember is that were 9 months between the final episode of the first series and the start of the second. It may seem a bit of a throwaway comment, but it’s an important figure to remember for the further along we get.
One question that has to be asked is why had no-one ever thought of this sort of show before? Ghosts and ghost stories have been a part of our lives since the Middle Ages and indeed before. We all know of someone who has had some sort of paranormal experience, in my case three people as my mum, my granddad and my aunt have all had something inexplicable happen to them in their lives. Even I have had something happen to me while staying at a friend’s house that made me stay awake for the rest of the night. So with everyone having even the smallest interest in ghosts, why had no-one ever made a show about looking for them before? There had been attempts in the past but as was alluded to in the previous act, they were relegated to late night slots off the main channels. There was also the small matter of Ghost Watch to contend with.
Act Two, Scene Two: A Slight Detour - Ghost Watch
I have at many points this year mentioned Ghost Watch, both on this site and on the various message boards I inhabit and for very good reason: it's simply a very, very good show. For the uninitiated, it was a live ghost hunt emanating from Northolt in London presented by Michael Parkinson. The only reason I mention this is because it's format so closely foreshadowed what Most Haunted would do when they took the plunge and went to broadcasting live shows it deserves to be at least referenced. Like Most Haunted, the show was presented live in front of an audience; it was hosted by a recognizable name from TV (in Ghost Watch's case, Michael Parkinson); it had an 'interactive hub' helmed by Mike Smith and had a blond on the spot reporter in the form of Sarah Greene backed up by Craig Charles on the front line.
The difference between Most Haunted Live and Ghost Watch was that the latter was purely a piece of fiction, a more dramatic retelling of the legendary case of the Enfield Poltergeist from the 1970s. With hindsight, most people who have watched more recent Most Haunted Lives would probably say that Ghost Watch was the more legitimate of the shows but that is a topic to addressed further down. Now while it would be a tenuous link at best, but the look and feel of Ghost Watch must surely have influenced Antix when deciding whether to go ahead and broadcast a live special. However, Ghost watch's more lasting legacy was that it shied most of the big TV channels away from paranormal programming, whether it be fact or fiction, as the backlash against the BBC in its aftermath was sweeping. Numerous complains were made about the show, and one boy was so traumatized by the show that he killed himself. As alluded to earlier, paranormal programming was as such marginalized to the depths of the late night schedule or forced to exist on smaller satellite channels. Indeed, the only show to make it out of the shadows was the Michael Aspel fronted 'Strange But True?' show, but even that tended to move its focus away from straight up paranormal investigations to encompass UFOs and more famous ghost stories and managed to run for four series before being shelved so by 1997 the very notion of a factual show investigating ghosts and hauntings had been removed from the big channels minds.
Act Two, Scene Three: Too Much Of A Good Thing?
With the ratings success of the series, Living commissioned Antix and Hanrahan Media to do a live show to book-end the series. The idea was pretty much the same as the above mentioned 'Ghost Watch' in that the Most Haunted team would be investigating one location, live on Halloween 2002. The viewing figures more than justified the decision as an average of 560,000 people tuned in to watch and as such more Live events were scheduled, all of which were one night specials. The first sign that both Living TV and Antix were trying to over-saturate the market for the programme ironically came in the first year, when they scheduled the second ever Most Haunted Live just before Christmas. It seems an odd decision to schedule it then as the second series was more than four months away from being broadcast, and so the sole reasoning behind it must have been due to the viewing figures the last one had garnered.
There is a saying that when something is hot, then it can do no wrong and when it goes cold it can do no right. Football teams are notorious for this as things can be going swimmingly for months before a stretch of bad results sends the team's confidence in freefall. TV shows are even more notable, as can be shown by WCW's Monday Nitro show which started off hot and then when it became infinitely terrible it good do nothing right and as such the ratings went into freefall. There is seemingly no rhyme or reason why things take off and then go off the rails, but the sensible thinking is that to keep someone's interest you have to keep things fresh. WCW didn't realize this until it had shed half of its viewers and it's unfortunately the same mistake Antix would make further down the line and even now, it seems unable or unwilling to change its viewpoint. However, that is all in the future but in leaving 2002 Living had a brand new hit show that people were talking about and was bringing viewing figures it had only dreamed of. And with the digital TV audience growing month by month, 2003 was destined to bring bigger and brighter things.
Act Two, Scene Four: The Rise
By early 2003 Living TV had a certifiable hit on their hands which wasn't reliant on importing a show from the United States. However, this was the also the year were the first chink's in the show's armour began to show themselves as Most Haunted was expanded from 30 minutes to an hour in order to no doubt maximise advertising revenue for both Living and Antix. While initially this was a good idea much later it would start help expose the programme and nowhere was this more apparent when a year later they re-ran the first series with 30 minutes extra footage tacked on. Still we're in 2003 at the moment and this was the first year that Living would air two series of Most Haunted in the same calendar year, and this year was the first that the Live shows expanded from one night as the New Years Live special ran over three nights. That particular Live, which had the running theme of the hunt for Dick Turpin, also gave critics of the show plenty of ammunition when they started to take shots at them but we're not there just yet so let's back up a bit and start with Series Two.
The very first episode of Series Two was filmed at Brannigan's night club in Manchester City Centre, somewhere I have myself been for a drink probably around the time that the episode was being filmed. Needless to say, there were some interesting phenomena caught like an intriguing EVP recording captured in the roof of the building. However, this episode actually saw the debut of what would eventually become one of Most Haunted's running gags and something that in the long run would hurt the programme's credibility. This was not the first time that Derek Acorah had been possessed but marked the very first time that the footage was shown in the show. He had also been possessed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane but that had never made the final cut due to the first series truncated running time, but as they now had an extra half hour to fill in it went. The real question at the heart of the issue was whether Acorah was really possessed, because if Most Haunted was following OFCOM's guidelines to the letter then every Acorah possession would have fell on the cutting room floor, seeing as it clearly shows " Demonstrations of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and similar practices" and as such "are acceptable only when they are clearly and explicitly presented as entertainment". So one could argue that from the very second that the possession was shown, Antix were unwittingly showing the world that their product which they had prided themselves as being genuine was in fact staged. The episode was also the highest rated show on Living TV that week, and its Sunday night replay coming third. Nonetheless, the rest of series two passed off relatively incident free until they reached the Clerkenwell House Of Detention in the centre of London.
In retrospect this was, after the Brannigan's episode, easily one of the best episodes that Antix ever produced though not necessarily for phenomena as barely any was caught. Indeed it's worthwhile noting that through the first three or four series of Most Haunted the most the team ever caught were light anomalies, occasional sounds and the odd possession. The episode from the House Of Detention was however the first and indeed only time when sound and vision has had to be stopped during the broadcast. The reasons for this were that during his walkaround the venue, Acorah supposedly made contact with a spirit who had a strong dislike of women but when this was played out on TV the surname was blanked out with a note on the bottom of the screen saying that this had been done to protect any living relatives. This went on until Acorah started describing in detail what this supposed spirit wanted to do until both the sound and film were cut, and then showing an obviously distressed Acorah attempting to calm himself down. Now as compulsive television this was a sure-fire home run but the questions about why the supposed footage had been cut remained. The reason most skeptics and cynics had for the name being cut out is that any surviving relatives may well have sued both Antix and Living for libel/slander on account of their relative and should such a case have gone to court and no records of this man having committed the crimes Acorah had claimed he had, well any suspicions about the show not being quite on the level would be confirmed. Most Haunted also achieved a first during this series, as the dual location episode filmed from Derby was the first episode to garner over one million viewers, as did the next two episodes as well. Eight of the eleven episodes shown in that series were the highest rated on Living that week, while the final episode was relegated to third place after the Live Special shown on the following Saturday (an episode I missed because I was getting rather drunk in Birmingham celebrating my 23rd Birthday).
2003 also saw a decision which would ultimately start Most Haunted's gradual decline, and that was that a new series started barely four months after the last one had finished. Again, the episodes featured barely any notable phenomena, with a strange dark figure being reported in the Schooner Hotel edition, while at the Muckleburgh collection Karl Beattie heard (and recorded) what sounded like footsteps in the building after stressing that he was completely alone. This particular incident could not be proven as the use of locked off cameras had been seemingly abandoned at various locations, and as such most phenomena occurred when there were no locked off cameras, and any phenomena that reputedly occurred always happened where the cameras were not pointing directly at it. Again, it could be said that such incidents of phenomena reputedly occurring off camera and simply being passed over or accepted as the truth happened so infrequently that it could just be coincidence, but for any doubters it was more ammunition for the programme being fraudulent.
The show finished 2003 with the first multi night broadcast in the show's history as they spent three nights in London and then Yorkshire searching for the ghost of Dick Turpin and regular readers of this site and various others should know exactly what happened here… but that's for next time!