Thursday

America, prepare
thyself for 'Celebdaq'

Hot Brit TV show: Spoof stock trading in stars

By Heidi Dawley

   Tired of seeing the same old money-losing names in your portfolio? Thought about ditching the likes of IBM, Unilever and your dot.com dogs for something with a bit more bite?
   What about taking a flyer on Brad Pitt (BRDPIT, price $3.83), Julia Roberts (JULIAR, price $3.93) and, for that dash of old money stability, Queen Elizabeth II (QUEEN, price $6.30)?
   It’s all possible on one of Britain’s hot new TV and internet games. Called "Celebdaq," it’s the BBC’s spoof of Nasdaq, and it trades shares (virtual money only, of course) in celebrities from all walks of life.
   The objective of the show is to assess how the various shares will perform the following week. Performance is based on the number of column centimeters each racks up in the British tabloids and broadsheets.
It is one of the BBC’s most promising new formats, which the corporation is currently touting at MIP-TV, the international TV festival in Cannes, France.
   Having had success in the past with such hit formats as "The Weakest Link," "Teletubbies" and "Tweenies" overseas, the BBC has high hopes for "Celebdaq."
   Even before the festival in Cannes, there were reports that U.S. production houses had approached the BBC about purchasing the format to develop an American version.
   The controversial "Celebdaq" is the brainchild of Conrad Green, a driving force behind "Pop Idol" and "Big Brother," which also became hits in the U.S. ("Pop" as "American Idol").
   "Celebdaq," which is similar to the U.S.'s Hollywood Stock Exchange, first launched as an internet game in July. But it was when the TV show debuted Feb.14 that the game really took off. Since then the number of registered players has doubled to 260,000, and the site now gets 1 million hits a day.
   Broadcast on BBC3, a cable channel, the show consists of a half-hour segment on Friday nights plus a one-minute market update each night. The host, a veteran Wall Street reporter, presents it in pseudo business style. Currently the show gets an audience of about 100,000.
   Celebrities’ troubles pay dividends to players, literally.
   After registering, each player gets $15,700 to buy their portfolio. The prices of the stocks are all based on supply and demand, just as in a real market.
   Stocks in the portfolio can then be traded, dumping those who are out of the press for folks with higher profiles. On Fridays dividends are paid based on how much column space each star snags. Small cash prizes are given to top-performing investors.
   The key to a winning portfolio? Choosing stars with a lot of dirty laundry is a good starting point. The best stocks to hold are those of “really rich people in real trouble,” explains one expert.
   Prince Charles (PRCHAS, price $14.05), a perennial favorite and top performer last week, managed a whopping 23,964 square centimeters of space in the tabloids, thanks to an report documenting problems in the way his royal household is run.
   Not surprisingly the exchange has amassed plenty of column space itself for its “morally dubious” nature.
   The exchange is not the first of its kind. There are already two others -- popex.com for the music industry and Hollywood Stock Exchange for movies and stars. But it is the accompanying TV show that makes the BBC’s offering different.

-Heidi Dawley, an American living in London, covers European media for Media Life.

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