[Neil Jones]

Well it arguably at least counts down rather than counts up like you could say the Countdown clock does.

I could argue our version "counts down" to the 30 second mark on the board, whereas the one on the pilot posted counts upwards back to 0.
Indeed the original French show, Des Chiffres et Des Lettres were going all round a digital clock by 1990, for a round that looks like it was 45 seconds:
www.youtube.com 

Though in fairness they've had a few ways of presenting that, from not at all to the current digital version that looks like the clock function on Android phones