| Avago | |
| Logo Alt: | Avago |
| Launch Date: | 4 July 2002 |
| Closed Date: | 4 October 2006 |
| Owner: | YooMedia |
Avago (have a go) was a gaming television channel in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was launched on 4 July 2002.
There were numerous games you could play on Avago, by pressing the red button on the Sky+ remote. The main game was Avago Balls, a live bingo game. Other games included Spin 2 Win and Trackside. The official Avago website game's descriptions:
Avago also played Big Shuffle, a live card-turning game in which viewers bet on whether the next card turned would be higher or lower than the current one.
Avago Balls was the main game on the channel; it was a live show that broadcast on the channel for ten hours every day. It worked in a similar way to bingo with presenters pulling the balls and players buying electronic playing cards. The interactivity was emphasised with text messages being read while the balls were being pulled, a daily poll on a topical issue voted via the Sky+ remote again while playing and special prizes such as a weekly draw.
No actual skill (or activity) was required to "play" Avago Balls. Players bought "cards" via their Sky remote handsets, and watched as the system checked them automatically against the balls that had been drawn. Claiming a win was done automatically too.
One major innovation was that each player's cards were superimposed onto the broadcast picture by software running in their Sky set-top box (the box had to remain connected to Avago by phone during play; this link was used to download the cards' numbers and patterns). This gave a much stronger illusion of actually participating in game of skill rather than a lottery.
Avago Balls was a revised version of the game that was played when the channel first launched. In the original version (called "Avago – The Biggest Numbers Game in Town"), each game continued until someone had filled the required pattern of squares (like traditional Bingo). This resulted in relatively few winners, and long games (sometimes 30 balls or more on large patterns).
In the revised ("Avago Balls") version, each game was a fixed length of 15 balls. Anyone who matched at least one square was deemed a "winner", and those who had matched the most squares (typically five or more) had their names displayed and read out by the presenters.
On 22 December 2005, Yoomedia announced the sale of Avago to the gambling operator Gala Coral. The deal was said to be worth £5.1m in a move which would see the channel rebrand as Gala Bingo in the 3rd quarter of 2006.
Gala TV launched on 4 October 2006. It was planned for the channel to also launch on Virgin Media / NTL, but this never happened and was only broadcast on Sky, Freesat and online. The only presenter from Avago to move to Gala TV was Liv Kennard.
The longest lasting presenters were Mark Pell, Jemish Patel, Charlotte Gane, Lawrie Jordan. The host of the biggest prize giveaways was Colin Murnane. Some of the last Avago presenters were Marc Raphael, James Seager, Jodie McMullen, Steve Walls, Sylvia Viosna, Freya Berry and Paul Metcalfe.