Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Heat Is On (TV series)

The Heat Is On (TV series)

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Hoax. This series never existed. There is a similarly named one-off show — Sport Relief: The Heat is On — but that is completely unrelated. The single reference in the article is circular: the article dates from 2005; the reference dates from 2008 and is obviously based on the Wikipedia hoax article. — TREY MATURIN has spoken 00:52, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Delete as a blatant hoax (WP:G3). Not seeing any sources that mention this before the article's creation in 2005. gobonobo ⁺ ^c 01:20, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy was already declined by EurekaLott. — TREY MATURIN has spoken 01:27, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That decline was clearly invalid. This is so blatantly a hoax. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:09, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, per nom, seems like a hoax. Will be longest a hoax article has existed in WP, WP:HOAXLIST. Thanks, Indagate (talk) 08:21, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Television and United Kingdom. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 11:22, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and preserve at the hoax museum. 17 years is a new record. It’s staggering that this flew under the radar for that long. Even the Teresa of Jesus, Child hoax (which I successfully AfD’d) circulated for less time and was added in good faith.

Who knows how many other hoaxes slipped through the cracks in or before 2005 and are still waiting to be exposed? 00sClassicGamerFan (talk) 16:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy delete as hoax and preserve at the hoax museum. This is a new record for the longest lasting hoax article, surpassing Ruda Real. We should look for other hoaxes on Wikipedia that lasted for over a decade. 142.161.173.231 (talk) 18:53, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Bobby Davro - not a hoax. A search for Bobby Davro brought up the following sources (which fail GNG but corroborate with each other that the show existed): Express UK, The Daily Mail...In the 1990s, he switched to BBC, with shows like Public Enemy Number One and talent show, The Heat Is On. And Garston-Entertainment UK He then went on to many Televison appearances and TV shows like On the Box, Sketch Pad, The Heat is on & Run the Risk. He has agents mentioning the show, Tony Denton Promotions, and Laughter UK, Central Fife Times - but nothing that spells N-O-T-A-B-L-E. There are probably mentions of the show in TV listings back in the 90s that can be found in the UK's newspaper archives which may verify that the show existed. Atsme 💬 📧 02:43, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The mentions in Express and Daily Mail, both generally unreliable sources, are undoubtedly WP:CITOGENESIS. It isn't surprising that the intern or whoever at the talent agency tasked with writing up the blurb just cribbed from either Wikipedia or those articles. While it was supposedly a BBC show, it does not have a BBC programme ID and can't be found on their websites. There isn't a single mention of the show in any television database or reliable source. gobonobo ⁺ ^c 04:03, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CITOGENISIS is the mainstay of online news media, with the exception of few, but it's referred to more often as PR wire. I am well aware that the sources I used are not RS for substantiating N or any fact-based news but CONTEXTMATTERS, and we're talking about a failed TV talent contest type of show. The other arguments here relative to it not being listed in the BBC lineup proves nothing. A better way to ascertain whether or not a TV show/series existed, look it up in a TV guide in local newspapers that are dated during the time the show presumably aired. I don't have access to a British newspaper archive that published a British TV guide, but if you're dependent only on its absence in a Google search, or in a Wikidata search for online BBC info, then I'm not convinced it didn't exist. REDIRECTs are cheap, and if someone is able to find that listing in a 1990's TV guide, it spares WP the embarrassment of further confirming it is an unreliable source, or that some of its editors failed due diligence. Atsme 💬 📧 10:29, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete ~~It's most certainly NOT a hoax, folks. It was schlock TV of the worst sort, but it was actually a thing.~~ It's just not a notable thing. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 04:52, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Except it most certainly is a hoax… the agent’s website is a copy-and-paste of an older version of Davro’s Wikipedia article, which, of course, linked back to the hoax article. Took me 15 seconds and 4 clicks to establish that. — TREY MATURIN has spoken 05:33, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree at this point in time that this is a hoax. Your research is flawed, and unconvincing to this editor, who happens to be a retired television producer, that it is a complete hoax. Find the British TV guides for that time period - check local newspapers before hanging the "hoax" tag on it. If it were a hoax, it could've been a speedy, and yet, here we are at AfD. Atsme 💬 📧 10:37, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A search of the BBC Genome Project shows that there was an endurance contest reality series of the same name shown in August and September 2001, long after this alleged 1990–94 series (which does not show up at all). There was also a programme on global warming called Environment: The Heat is On, aired in 1991.

So yes, the article here is certainly a hoax. Case closed. 00sClassicGamerFan (talk) 10:53, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I do think this is a hoax. The original version made all sorts of extravagant claims about winning a BAFTA and "cocaine-fuelled prostitute orgies"—if any of that was true, this show would have attracted boatloads of press coverage, so the fact that there's nothing in any of the contemporaneous sources available via ProQuest, Newspapers.com, or elsewhere on the Internet makes it clear that we're dealing with a hoax. The post-2005 mentions are interesting, but they're all from dubious sources that likely aren't even enough to satisfy WP:V, which is a deal-breaker. (Put another way, there's a reason that we don't trust the Express and the Daily Mail, and it's that they have a reputation for doing things like getting their information off of Wikipedia.) I am of course glad to reconsider if reliable pre-2005 sources can be found, but that seems very unlikely indeed. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:25, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Note also that an IP on the same range as the one who created this article added more obvious nonsense about The Heat is On here. This article was clearly not a good-faith contribution. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:42, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete/begrudgingly move to WP:HOAXLIST. Clearly a hoax—albeit an impressively long-lived one—especially when you consider where it does appear in sources. Always either straight from Wikipedia or with so little context that it's clear this article was used. The first edits to the page, as mentioned by Extraordinary Writ, don't help its case. With an old hoax like this one it's going to be forever ingrained in the Internet in some form. Ovinus (talk) 05:43, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I give up. Delete it with fire anyway. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 05:46, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It happens.... This article is definitely a lesson to how vigilant and skeptical we need to be. I wouldn't have questioned it had I come across it organically. Ovinus (talk) 05:52, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]