Friday Night Games (partially found Australian spin-off of "Big Brother"; 2006)

The show's title screen.

Status: Partially Found

'Friday Night Games' was a 2006 Australian game show which was created as a spin-off to the 2005 special show: Big Brother: Friday Night Live which in itself, was a weekly live to air game show featured as part of the tv show: 'Big Brother Australia'. This show however was pre-recorded and shot on location in Dreamworld's: 'Games Arena' at dreamworld studios in coomera qld.

About

The general premise of Friday Night Games was celebrities in teams of 3 competing in rediculous and wacky games for the purpose of winning three shows (the heat, the preliminary final and the grand final) and donating AU$50,000 to charity. Every week to make teams 4 players, the show would include a 'celeb to be'. This was a member of the public who would be decided from hundreds of applicants whittled down to a handful of contestants competing in two challenges explained on the show each week. The first challenge (which was recorded before the show's actual taping) had challenges which included holding onto a balloon whilst riding "Wipeout", holding a piece of paper above their head whilst riding on the Tower Of Terror, a roller coaster at Dreamworld, without ripping it or trying to make origami whilst riding on the Giant Drop, another thrill ride at Dreamworld. The next challenge featured contestants playing shorter formatted various mini games during each episodes recordings with the female and male winners of each games then being added to the teams of celebrities.

The Search

The first episode to be found was the 'athletes vs academics' episode which was found on a game show trading website in late 2011 as a complete episode with it's commercials. It wouldn't be until 2018 when the search would be resumed as webpage was discovered with more episodes listed by yet another game show. The gameshow collection of 'cjpowney' contained Episodes 1-4 of the series. However these were not posted online to any kind of file sharing website. And despite attempts to contact this lead, he did not reply to messages.

Through the years between 2020 and 2023 many listed people from the show's end credits were contacted. Most didn't respond however some people responded but claimed they had no clue how to locate the episodes. All of the show's production companies were contacted however each of them suggested contacting one another to try and find the show. This was likely as a means of not wanting to deal with people searching for their shows.

In early 2021, the shows main host 'Mike Goldman' was contacted about the show and claimed he was "almost sure" he had the entire series on VHS tapes at his home. He sent a parcel of all his shows to lost media YouTuber: "Sam Davis". When davis opened the parcel many of his shows were in there but no Friday Night Games. When he asked goldman where the show was, goldman said that everything he still had from his hosting days was in that parcel and that he: "must not have ever given that show". This was the first of two dead ends in the search.

The second lead in the search for fng was an email sent from the aforementioned 'cjpowney' to lost media YouTuber: Sam Davis. Cj detailed in the email that he had seen davis' lost media special about the show (the first one) and went on to say: "And as I was watching I thought to myself, I have some of those "missing eps". He finished the email by recognising that davis attempted to contact him back in 2018 with his original email about the listed fcg episodes, and ended the email saying: "I would be happy to talk game shows and you might just have some items of interest for me also". Despite a quick response from Davis 'cjpowney' never replied back. Davis attempted reaching him on other forms of social media believing emails was not something he checked regularly. However it just so turned out that 'cjpowney' never checked any social media messages. Since early April 2023 cj has not replied to davis' reply to his email nor has he read/seen any of davis' other attempts to reach him online.

The third, (yet most promising lead) in the search for the show was discovered in late July 2023. After most of the show's grand final episode was randomly found to have been sitting on YouTube for three months as the inconspicuously titled: 'Blank VHS Tape #12', lost media YouTuber Sam Davis once again became inspired to find more episodes. As to be expected, watching the grand final episode only fueled the desire to see more from the show. He decided to google: 'cj powney game shows' and with this google search he somehow managed to find a result on the very first page of that google search. This result was a mirrored website that contained a detailed collection from another 'game show collector' was discovered online. All but two of the ten friday night games episodes were listed in this collection. The instagram of the person who listed these episodes was contacted and he replied quite quickly. The person who we'll refer to as 'B' for the sake of privacy, said he remembered the show. B also noted that he was surpised his game show collection still existed as a mirror because the original website domain had been long since deleted. The most important message however from 'B' was when he recalled throwing out a bunch of his vhs tapes to try and reduce clutter in his house. Apparently according to 'B' he recalls some of these tapes being his 'Friday Night Games tapes' which were multiple episodes of the show (including the commercials) recorded on several different tapes. Interestingly enough, lost media YouTuber 'Sam Davis' claimed in his second video about the topic: "the dream would be to find all of the episodes recorded back to back on a different vhs tapes with the commercials in tact"...

Not long after this dead end in the search occurred. The show's lead production coordinator was contacted on the website: 'linked in' about the show. He recalled converting episodes 3-10 of the series to a television preservation format known as: 'DigiBetacam' and then mastering on a site in the gold coast for what is known as: 'picture lock-off' (which is a way of formatting a tv show into it's best possible quality for archival purposes). He then brought the episodes to sydney for: 'audio sweetening' and 're-stripping (a television show mastering process), after that he brought those converted episodes to the Network Ten building in Sydney, Australia to then be stored away in their archives.

The current efforts in the search for Fng involve attempts to contact the archives at Network Ten Sydney. Although, there is a low likelyhood of much help being given from this department of the network...

Lost/Found Episodes

When it comes to found/lost episodes, just two of the ten episodes that went to air have been found. They are: Episode 6: Baby Night (the entire episode and the commercials) and Episode 10: The Grand Final Show (missing only the first two segments of the episode). These episodes are on YouTube.

Some of the confirmed themes of the shows from lost episodes are as follows:

- 'Aussie Barbeque Night' (confirmed to be Episode 1) - 'Circus Night' (unconfirmed Episode Number) - 'Wedding Night' (confirmed to be Episode 5) - 'Pirate Night' (Possibly Episode 9)

Episodes

Episode 6.

Grand final episode (incomplete).

Sam Davis' first video on the subject.

Sam Davis' second video on the subject.

Sam Davis' third video on the subject.

Two Promos for Episode 9 of the show (2:41) & (6:31)

Episode List

#	Teams	Air Date	Status
1	Big Brother vs Australian Idol	17 February 2006	Lost
2	Country Bumpkins vs City Slickers	24 February 2006	Lost
3	AFL vs NRL	3 March 2006	Lost
4	Stage vs Screen	10 March 2006	Lost
5	Blondes vs Brunettes	17 March 2006	Lost
6	Academics vs Athletes	24 March 2006	Found
7	Country Bumpkins vs Australian Idol	31 March 2006	Lost
8	Stage vs NRL	7 April 2006	Lost
9	Athletes vs Brunettes	14 April 2006	Lost
10	Country Bumpkins vs Brunettes vs Stage	21 April 2006	Partially Found