The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: Loogaroo on September 07, 2015, 03:47:02 AM
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Figured I'd just plop this here and get some discussion going.
http://the-bloog.com/final-answer-interrupted-wwtbam-timeline.shtml
Given the clearances I'm hearing about the new season, it does sound like this is a farewell tour for the show, but still - I honestly thought WWTBAM was going to crater in 2011. Stranger things have happened.
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Very good read. I plan on watching for the first time since '11 next week.
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You don't tweak something that doesn't need it. The only thing Classic Millionaire ever did wrong was overexposure. Any host would have been fine with the classic format. But ABC drove it into the ground with celebrity specials.
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Well written, Tim.
One comment: the first save haven will be worth $5,000, not $2,000. (Eighth paragraph from the bottom.)
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Or as Richard Dawson would've said, word of mouth killed it :-)
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To this day, I wonder what would have happened if Millionaire never went to series, and continued doing their sweeps specials. With the other networks coming out with their own series, wouldn't ABC have been pretty much forced to take the plunge? Certainly the other shows would have done better if they didn't have Millionaire hogging the audience in early 2000, but would they have been hits?
The trick is that once they've gone to series, it's difficult to go back to specials without seeming like you've cancelled the show.
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Or as Richard Dawson would've said, word of mouth killed it :-)
Why would he say that? What does that even mean?
The more I watch the old shows the less I think of Regis as host--it's not just that as the show wore on he didn't even bother to wait more than a second or two before pronouncing judgment, it's that he would make fun of certain contestants and their hobbies or fascinating facts.
To Kevin's point: I think that if Millionaire stays two weeks every sweeps period that perhaps $1 million doesn't become Pavlov's Grand Prize, and other shows roll back because they don't need to give away a million dollars in response. British contingent: for how long did Millionaire remain a Special Event in the UK before becoming a regular series?
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Survivor and Big Brother air, what, twice a week seasonally? And both still do pretty well 15 years later. I do wonder ABC had used that model or Travis's above example with limited celebrity episodes, would the show have made it past 2002? And would there be a daytime version? All moot points, but Tim's article illustrates what killed this show. Super Millionaire and the 10th Anniversary special were enjoyable (minus the celebrity question on the latter*).
I've said this before, but I really wish the 1999-2000 crop of games had left more of a residual effect on the genre, and not so much the post-Deal or No Deal type shows. Even with the gimmicks, at least the shows from 2000 were competently produced and featured everyday people, not sitcom tropes.
/At least the dark rave look is finally starting to die out
//*Patricia Heaton...UGH
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To this day, I wonder what would have happened if Millionaire never went to series, and continued doing their sweeps specials. With the other networks coming out with their own series, wouldn't ABC have been pretty much forced to take the plunge?
If they couldn't help themselves enough to turn WWTBAM into a series down the line, at least they could've done something along the lines of what they do with Dancing with the Stars - run the show for several weeks, then rest it, then bring it back a few months later, then rest, and so on. Make the last week of each "season" a celebrity week so that you have a de facto finale rather that just shuffling off to Buffalo with no fanfare.
The trick is that once they've gone to series, it's difficult to go back to specials without seeming like you've cancelled the show.
Not necessarily - if there was some sort of stigma attached to being cancelled and then brought back on a limited basis, Super Millionaire and the 10th Anniversary week wouldn't have happened. Super Millionaire only got nixed because they ran out of timeslots to put it in.
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Not necessarily - if there was some sort of stigma attached to being cancelled and then brought back on a limited basis, Super Millionaire and the 10th Anniversary week wouldn't have happened. Super Millionaire only got nixed because they ran out of timeslots to put it in.
But the show was still active in syndication while that was going on. When I think Kevin is saying that if Millionaire went from X per week to just 2-3 weeks every 6 months, it's going to feel really weird.
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But the show was still active in syndication while that was going on. When I think Kevin is saying that if Millionaire went from X per week to just 2-3 weeks every 6 months, it's going to feel really weird.
It wouldn't have been every six months. Survivor and The Amazing Race do thirteen weeks on, then take three months off, thirteen weeks on, thirteen weeks off. Big Brother is on for three months and then it is shelved for nine. In England I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! is a yearly event around Thanksgiving. Football games happen once a week and then the season is over. There's precedent.
Part of that initial excitement was that if you were invested in the show you were less likely to miss one than if it is on four times a week for an hour each time. If you miss one of those then you catch up next time with the "Previously on Millionaire" opener. As much as Greed or Winning Lines or Twenty-one tried to siphon off some of the excitement, Millionaire could have renewed itself by resting and then returning. I think the same could be said for Deal or No Deal: the more people watched and realized that it's a slight game being dragged out interminably and held up by general silliness and where each game takes up an entire episode and chances are good that the chosen contestant is going to win a pile of money then there's no problem if you miss one here or there because after all it will be there on Friday waiting for you.
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With the other networks coming out with their own series, wouldn't ABC have been pretty much forced to take the plunge?
Without the success of Millionaire, the other networks don't come out with their own series.
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With the other networks coming out with their own series, wouldn't ABC have been pretty much forced to take the plunge?
Without the success of Millionaire, the other networks don't come out with their own series.
Are you saying that the other networks didn't decide to run with Greed and Winning Lines until after ABC decided to make Millionaire a series? I thought they were simultaneous, if the other networks didn't beat ABC to the punch by a little bit. When did those series start? Wasn't Greed a series in November?
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Millionaire was August 1999. Greed was October or November, and I think Winning Lines and 21 premiered the same weekend in January 2000. IIRC, Millionaire became a regular series the same night 21 premiered.
Thinking about it now, it really amazes me just how rapidly Millionaire took the country by storm. It truly was a pop culture phenomenon, even after just the two-week trial run. I'm with Chris, though...without Millionaire, none of those exist. I remember watching Greed and immediately dismissing it as a copycat; it quickly grew on me.
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I'm with Chris, though...without Millionaire, none of those exist. I remember watching Greed and immediately dismissing it as a copycat; it quickly grew on me.
Oh, no question about it. I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that if Millionaire tried to remain as specials, those series still would have come along, and their success (thanks to not having to fight Millionaire) would have forced ABC to make Millionaire into a series.
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Oh, no question about it. I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that if Millionaire tried to remain as specials, those series still would have come along, and their success (thanks to not having to fight Millionaire) would have forced ABC to make Millionaire into a series.
Winning Lines was gone in three months. Twenty-One might have lasted longer had NBC had some faith in the show and not had it dance around the schedule. The one show that I think gave Millionaire anything approaching a run for their money was Greed.
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Agreed there, and I think that's where Travis and I's idea of making it a regular series, but on the DWTS or Survivor model - airing 10 or 12 weeks at a time each spring and fall - come into play.
ETA: To Travis's point...wasn't Twenty One a top 30 show? I actually enjoyed that one, but NBC tinkered with it a little too much to make big money wins happen.
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Thinking about it now, it really amazes me just how rapidly Millionaire took the country by storm. It truly was a pop culture phenomenon, even after just the two-week trial run. I'm with Chris, though...without Millionaire, none of those exist. I remember watching Greed and immediately dismissing it as a copycat; it quickly grew on me.
Phenomenon is the only word for it...how else would you explain hysteria to a level in which would lead U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT to contact a complete nobody like me for an brief interview, much less actually quote me in their magazine...too bad Charles Manson had to be on the cover that week!
"Daddy, what's a magazine?" :)
Still one of the fondest memories of this old fart's life...
JakeT
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Agreed there, and I think that's where Travis and I's idea of making it a regular series, but on the DWTS or Survivor model - airing 10 or 12 weeks at a time each spring and fall - come into play.
ETA: To Travis's point...wasn't Twenty One a top 30 show? I actually enjoyed that one, but NBC tinkered with it a little too much to make big money wins happen.
I thought the tinkering worked to its advantage, as to where instead of just having to win four matches to get a million, they made you do a little more work for it.
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While I don't disagree, IIRC, the show made those changes in order to claim the game show winnings record, which it held for about two nights. :p
Even with all the big money shows, this was at a time when winning a million bucks was still somewhat of a novelty.
/Catherine Rohm still had one friggin Pit Pass left
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/Catherine Rohm still had one friggin Pit Pass left
And had been on-set for about twelve hours, is what I remember reading.
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Rahim Oberholzer broke the record under the old format.
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Rahim Oberholzer broke the record under the old format.
And Dave Legler won his sixth game four days after Curtis Warren was given a million dollar gift. $25k for a single game was still a whole lot of scratch.
It was a noxious arms race that made a few people fabulously wealthy.
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This might just be the OCD in me, but I never liked how the first game under Twenty One's new payout ladder was $25K. Why? Because it was the only place in the entire show that gave away an increment of $5K when everything else was in $10Ks. So whenever a champ got dethroned, they'd wheel out the cash money winnings... and there was that $5,000 mini-stack flapping around with nothing to pair it up with.
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This might just be the OCD in me, but I never liked how the first game under Twenty One's new payout ladder was $25K. Why? Because it was the only place in the entire show that gave away an increment of $5K when everything else was in $10Ks. So whenever a champ got dethroned, they'd wheel out the cash money winnings... and there was that $5,000 mini-stack flapping around with nothing to pair it up with.
Would you have preferred a $10,000 round?
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Would you have preferred a $10,000 round?
Make the first game $20K and everything is jake.
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Would you have preferred a $10,000 round?
Make the first game $20K and everything is jake.
But see, then MY OCD kicks in and wonders why the first round isn't $25K, because it's a far more common game show prize and logically doubles to $50K and then again to $100K.
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I'll admit that the "extra" $5,000 always bugged me as well. With the assumption that the show existed to win the game show winnings arms race, two options are to increase the prize for winning the game by $25,000 each time, or to go 25-50-75-100k, and each further win worth $100,000.
If it was me in charge and the object was to focus on a compelling game show and not on figures that are fun to say and represent with massive piles of money, each win would be worth $25,000. The bonus game would have six questions that add to $21,000, and then a much harder question in the same category that turns those thousands into ten thousands.
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The bonus game would have six questions that add to $21,000, and then a much harder question in the same category that turns those thousands into ten thousands.
That's a great fix. Risking $15,000 for $6,000 more isn't quite as foolish as risking $150,000 for $60,000 more, especially if there's a 10x multiplier lying ahead.
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That's a great fix. Risking $15,000 for $6,000 more isn't quite as foolish as risking $150,000 for $60,000 more, especially if there's a 10x multiplier lying ahead.
I beg your pardon; I didn't mention it but there would be no risk. Think of it like the Body Language Sweepstakes: pile up money in the first half and either keep it or multiply it in the second.
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That's a great fix. Risking $15,000 for $6,000 more isn't quite as foolish as risking $150,000 for $60,000 more, especially if there's a 10x multiplier lying ahead.
I beg your pardon; I didn't mention it but there would be no risk. Think of it like the Body Language Sweepstakes: pile up money in the first half and either keep it or multiply it in the second.
Ok. Surely if these questions are free to guess for, you would eliminate the True/False aspect, yeah?
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Ok. Surely if these questions are free to guess for, you would eliminate the True/False aspect, yeah?
I think the early ones could be T/F, then multiple guess and then short answer. I envision the last question being similar to the Big Fat Bonus Question on Paranoia.
The problem I'm seeking to solve is that the Perfect 21 game gave away big piles of money in a very uninteresting way. Most everyone won $60,000 because that's the last place where a sight unseen gamble makes sense. Some chickened out with $30k and a few pushed it to $100k, but those who won money typically won $60,000. The repetition of it makes it all the more uninteresting.
Looking at statistics on the primetime version of Millionaire (because after all that's why the topic began), out of nearly 900 contestants about a quarter won $1,000; another quarter won $32,000 and about another quarter won $64k or $125k combined. (I don't know if Jeff's statistics include the Super Millionaire winners.) Basically, even though it felt like there was a period where everyone and his dog was winning $125,000 it wasn't the case. While there's only eleven outcomes (and really, you don't go on a show with the name Millionaire to win $2,000 or $4,000) any one of them could happen every time. On Twenty-one you knew that the winner was taking home at least $25,000 and then having a chance to win lots more money. The four times I can remember non-game show fans talking about primetime game shows it was about: Millionaire, Greed, The Chamber and Money Drop: each cases where it felt like anything could happen. Twenty-one and Winning Lines may have been fun or interesting games, but you were seeing another verse of the same ol' song.
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The article said that Survivor was put on Wednesday to avoid conflict with WWTBAM.
ABC decided to use the "neutron bomb" on Survivor (like they did against Twenty One et al) by scheduling special episodes of Millionaire against Survivor on May 31 and June 7, 2000 (the first two episodes of Survivor ever). Survivor beat them up in the ratings, IIRC; afterwards, the neutron bomb was seldomly used (if ever) again.
Brian
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ABC decided to use the "neutron bomb" on Survivor (like they did against Twenty One et al) by scheduling special episodes of Millionaire against Survivor on May 31 and June 7, 2000 (the first two episodes of Survivor ever). Survivor beat them up in the ratings, IIRC; afterwards, the neutron bomb was seldomly used (if ever) again.
I'd differ slightly with the "beating up" description; Survivor did indeed top the Wednesday, June 7 episode of WWTBAM (11.7 Nielsen rating for Survivor vs. 10.6 for the Wednesday Millionaire;) but I'm not sure I'd term that as "beating up." Remember, also, that this Wednesday show was a last-minute drop-in in the schedule; even up until a day or two before, ABC wasn't divulging if they were going to run a Wednesday episode or not. Regis did a "tune in tomorrow night" announcement at the end of the June 6 show but they were taping multiple show closings ("tune in tomorrow," "tune in Thursday," and so on) for most of the episodes that ran that week.