Des Chiffres et Des Lettres turns 50

[Philip A]

50 years ago (4 January 1972) marks the broadcast of the very first episode of the French television game show Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, the brainchild of the British counterpart, Countdown.

Des Chiffres et Des Lettres (the numbers and the letters) was created by Armand Jammot as the successor his earlier format, Le Mot Le Plus Long (the longest word), which was first shown on 19 September 1965, and featured letters games only. The numbers games, named Le Compte Est Bon (the total is good/right) were introduced less than 5 years later, hence the change of the show’s name. Des Chiffres et Des Lettres began with just 7 letters, before progressing to 8 letters, then 9 and now 10. Having broadcast more than 12,000 episodes, it is one of the longest-running television game shows in the world, and continues to be shown in France and neighbouring Francophone countries.

Late Belgian record executive Marcel Stellman discovered the format and thought it could be a success in the UK, and so he brought the format to British television and created Countdown itself. Yorkshire Television adopted the format for a series of pilot editions, titled Calendar Countdown, to be shown only in the Yorkshire Television region. These were hosted by the late Richard Whiteley, who was the host of the regional news programme Calendar (hence the title of the pilot). Upon the launch of Channel 4 in 1982, ‘Calendar’ was dropped from the title and Countdown became the very first programme to be shown on Channel 4.

[Philip A]

Here are some clips of early DCEDL: https://youtu.be/dlbDJM7sIHE