I will say we did debate Vin on at least revealing the actual number of seconds on both teams' scoreboards to show proof of performance and, in some cases, how close it actually was. What I am told they learned was that those that saw run-throughs found the actual numbers to be both disappointing. A 21-21 tiebreaker can be interesting, but, for example, a 16-16 game usually means maybe only one of six rounds produced a "7", so seeing a team "win" 87-90 kinda reinforced how "meh" the players were. Plus if you weren't paying rapt attention (as if often the case in a multi-screen viewing world), seeing a lower score flash for a win was confusing.
I suppose someone can forensically look back at the series, since I believe GSN is still playing most of the episodes, to see how this pans out in what is now a decent sample size of episodes. From the 40 I helped shepherd with what we thought at the time was an ambitious way to reward perfect scores, and seeing how few $20,000 and $25,000 jackpots we even hit, I suspect the end result will prove Vin's choice of the pregnant pause to be preferable.
