Merged The One - Australian TV

Just finished watching the 1st episode.

The search for the missing boy was problematic. The area was bounded and the "psychics" were told when they had reached a boundary. This limits the search area. Also after the first attempt, even if the camera crew were unaware of the boy's location before, they were for every subsequent search which could possibly bias the results.

Only one moved almost directly towards where the boy was hidden. She said, he's near some burnt trees, well you could look in any direction and find burnt trees.

I found the overhead map misleading. They showed the boy's position as a red dot, but the psychic was always shown as a yellow arrow, almost always pointing towards the boy's position.

The "psychics" should not have been allowed into the search area as almost all of them claimed remote viewing ability and should have limited their work to pointing on a map. That would be their only attempt, instead the format allowed them to keep searching and changing their paths during a 15 minute time limit.

The stage performances later on were rather poor except for the last man who "read" only one person and was making significant hits about fairly specific information. Again without revealing any mentalism methods, I have replicated this but I would generally do it with more than one person.

Dave Everett
 
Hughie522 I think you are being very unfair to Richard.
We have not seen the whole show, so who knows how much has been edited out, do you?
Richard is in a difficult spot. He cannot be totally anti the woo or he would not be able to be on the show. We need someone who has some sceptical credibility on the show so give him a chance. Lets see how things pan out over the whole series.
 
First psychic Raylene (?) traipsing through the bush says 'I thought I was going the right way but then I felt something telling me to turn around'- footage of her approaching what appeared to be a steep rocky descent.
 
Thanks for the nice comments. Wow.. so long the in studio for 1 hour of TV.
 
Was that whole area of bush equally easy to travel through?
I had the impression from the film that there were some areas of thicker bush or steep rocky slopes that would not be practical to take a child?
It looked like a big area from above, but on the ground were there some areas that it was obvious that you wouldn't go into?
 
After first episode

The online voting poll to the question

Are you a believer or a skeptic?

Has Believer at 58% and skeptic at 42% with 2215 respondants

http://au.tv.yahoo.com/b/the-one/

Richard,

My perception of the first episode is that it has been heavily edited. Edited to focus on the exciting hits rather than provide a balanced representation of the results.

How would you rank the first episodes editing ?
 
Well, suffice to say I'm convinced.

I've abandoned all rational thought and converted to woo. No, not really. The first episode of Australia's Most Gifted Psychic aired tonight and, well...

...it's a solid hour of entertainment for those without a skeptical bone in their bodies. For everyone else, it's Psychic Detectives all over again.

If you wanted to write a book on psychic cliches, this would be it. They even did some silly cold reading nonesense with unrestricted feedback. And Richard Saunders was a complete tool of the program. Any credibility he may have had has now been blown completely out of the water.

This is something for the woo woo crowd, and nothing more. There was no attempt to disprove or rationalise anything. It's all, "Well, he was certainly close!" and, "He knew things he couldn't have known!"

Ooh, wow, it's amazing, a miracle, sign me up for a thousand crystals and some applied kinesiology.

Dark days, my friends. Very dark days.

In England we had a series called A Sense of Murder (I think that's right) that was made using Australian and New Zealand psychics. It's unlikely we'll get to see the show you mentioned but I was wondering if some of them were used on the show. I can't find any sceptical views about them. Do you know of any helpful websites?
 
How would you rank the first episodes editing ?

Hmmm, hard to say. Yes, much of what was filmed was not shown.. but that's TV. I was not too unhappy with it. Keep watching and remember to keep score of how our contestants do on the location tests.
 
In England we had a series called A Sense of Murder (I think that's right) that was made using Australian and New Zealand psychics. It's unlikely we'll get to see the show you mentioned but I was wondering if some of them were used on the show. I can't find any sceptical views about them. Do you know of any helpful websites?

Here is the website for that show.
There are some sceptics in the forum for the show.
http://www.sensingmurder.co.nz/regfrm/
 
The "psychics" should not have been allowed into the search area as almost all of them claimed remote viewing ability and should have limited their work to pointing on a map. That would be their only attempt, instead the format allowed them to keep searching and changing their paths during a 15 minute time limit.

Acting as a bit of a devil's advocate, that's not quite true... "remote viewing" might conceivably mean actually seeing the location one is looking for, and that is not going to tell you where it is, only what it looks like. With that in mind, it makes sense to allow them to look for a place that matches what they allege to be seeing.

That said, yes, they did seem to have a lot of time to search around the area; enough to follow one of the paths all the way to the end and still come back to the correct side. And their cold reading display was simply ridiculous... "do you know any Mary? how about Bob?" Come on!
 
Amazing how the bloke that ran the fastest was one of the ones to find the kid.

I thought that cold reading was rather good, apart from the first 'Do you know Barbara or Bob?' the old duck seemed to agree with everything else, she agreed with so much in fact that I was starting to wonder if she was the psychic's auntie.
 
Amanda-Rousetty, Charmaine Wilson, Ezio De Angelis, She D'Montford, Rayleen Kable and Jason Betts are the psychics, who is the seventh?

I have been amusing myself this morning looking for their websites.
 
Ah, yes thanks, how could I forget him.

Did that She D'Montford claim to be a doctor of anything on the show?

"Shé has an honorary doctorate in religion & philosophy, specializing in Tibetan and Hindu Shamanism and ancient warrior codes as well as a degree in metaphysics."

Sounds dodgy.
 
She does call herself Rev. Dr. but can't remember if I've seen from where. Jason Betts also calls himself doctor as he has an honorray PhD from the "Open International University of Complementary Medicines (Sri Lanka)." He has a real maths degree from U. Tas though.
 
Ratings (national) report from Crikey.com.au:

Last night's TV ratings
The Winners: Seven News was tops again with 1.560 million, with the Seven's The One: Australia's Most Gifted Psychic at 7.30pm second with 1.468 million (the Daddo factor no doubt), the fresh episodes of Two and a Half Men at 8.30pm to 9.30pm averaged 1.447 million and Today Tonight was 4th with 1.385 million people. Wipeout on Nine at 7.30pm averaged 1.339 million and the second repeat episode of NCIS at 9.30pm averaged 1.318 million. The fresh episode of All Saints at 8.30pm averaged 1.274 million in 8th spot and A Current Affair was 9th with 1.266 million viewers. Nine News was 10th with 1.229 million and Home and Away averaged 1.229 million at 7pm for Seven. The 7pm ABC News was 12th with 1.205 million and the first repeat of NCIS at 8.30pm averaged 1.071 million. The Simpsons repeat at 8pm averaged 1.053 million on Ten in 14th spot and the fresh Simpsons episode at 7.30pm averaged 1.025 million.
 

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