High School Word Game?

Well, I've been promising it for weeks, now at last the episode I saw has aired. What do I really think of High School Quiz Show?

I'll tell you: I think the contestants are geeky, the host is annoying, the set is tacky, and the lack of prizes is cheap. The problem is, the exact same thing could be said about one of my favorite game shows of all time.

High School Quiz Show, for starters, has a terrible name. I've heard rumors that WGBH chose to call it that because they figured kids would equate it with High School Musical...let's just say I hope that isn't true. My next observation - and this is true of most of the local high school quiz bowl shows I've seen - the contestants are (A) really geeky and (B) don't really seem to want to be there - they look like they were just dragged into this by their teachers.

The game...like I said on March 25, it's "a pretty straightforward local high school quiz bowl show." The host - I'll certainly applaud WGBH for hiring a young woman stand-up comedian rather than the professor-types who populate most of these shows, but Dhaya Lakshminarayanan comes across to me as more annoying than anything else. There are no prizes, the set is tacky, and I've already forgotten what the music sounds like (not a good thing). Why am I not declaring this show awful? Well...I'd be contradicting myself. One of my all-time favorite game shows is Countdown.

If you haven't heard of Countdown, there's a reason: it's a British show, and has never had an American version (to be fair, it's actually a French format, but the version I'm used to is the British version). It's a word game vaguely akin to Scrabble (the board game, not the game show), and it fits nearly every one of the tropes described above. Geeky contestants? Oh yes. Annoying host? The current one, Jeff Stelling, sure is. No prizes? The season champion gets a complete Oxford English Dictionary. Tacky set? You bet. So what's the difference?

Well...Countdown is just that unique and enjoyable a game. It's the one international format that I want to come to America more than any other...but a game show with no prizes would never work on national television in America, and I somehow can't see Countdown giving away $1,000,000. Now I'm starting to wonder - does a local high school game show have to be a quiz game? Even if you couldn't get the rights to the name Countdown, would a similar word game work in America on a local, area-by-area basis?

Of course we're never going to really know this. Countdown isn't coming to America (although it is launching in Australia soon, again with no prizes), and a local high school game show is never going to be anything other than a quiz game. All I can say now is that since WGBH considered me for an internship on High School Quiz Show...I really, really hope they aren't reading this.

Aaron

A Game Show Fan Hub?

This is probably far from news, but now that we have a firm premiere date it just seems like the right time to talk about it. Hasbro, the toy company that owns pretty much every famous board game, is starting a TV channel. This channel is called The Hub (really!) and it will premiere on October 10, taking over the channel space currently filled by Discovery Kids.

First things first: Hasbro is making no claim that this will be a game show channel. In fact, well, there's a reason they're replacing Discovery Kids - they're pushing The Hub as a kids channel. There's no guarantee that it will have game shows on it - but at the same time, they've reportedly hired several veteran game show producers and former Game Show Network executives. The channel won't be exclusively game shows, but it's pretty clear they're going to be a large part of it.

"Well, of course," I hear you say. "They're a toy company. They're trying to develop their board games for television." If that's the case, I sincerely hope they think again. Adapting a preexisting property into a viable game show - let alone one kids would enjoy- is far from easy. Out of a fair number of attempts, I can only think of three that achieved any measure of success, namely Scrabble (which bore little resemblance to the board game), Trivial Pursuit (which was successful enough to be revived, but none of it's versions lasted very long) and Carmen Sandiego (which isn't owned by Hasbro). Otherwise, we're left with such disasters as Taboo (which adapted a perfectly enjoyable board game into one of the worst game shows I have ever seen) and Monopoly (ditto).

So what's going to happen here? It's probably just too early to tell. Frankly, I'm wondering less about whether there will be any game shows - there's bound to be at least one - than about how on Earth you fill twenty-four hours a day with stuff owned by Hasbro.

My advice: be prepared for a lot of Transformers reruns.

Aaron

I Can't Reveal Too Much Until April 5...

I feel sort of silly typing up the rules of a local high school quiz bowl show, but still, here's how High School Quiz Show plays out: there are two teams of four. Round one is buzz-in questions worth ten points each. In round two, one member of each team comes to the center podium for one minute of buzz-in questions worth five points each. In round three, there are six categories, each containing five questions worth ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and thirty points. The team that is behind at the beginning of the round picks a category, and the first team to buzz in with the correct answer picks the next category. Finally, round four is one minute of five point buzz-in questions.

There you go. It's...well, it's a pretty straightforward local high school quiz bowl show. I sometimes wonder if we should just have one of these shows for the whole country, but then I'm the one who said on February 11 that the local high school quiz bowl show is "pure Americana."

There's not much else I can say at the moment. I'm sorry. I'll have more about High School Quiz Show on April 8, and hopefully next week there will be some news.

One more note - in case you don't know, next Thursday is April 1. As I really, really, can't stand April Fools Day pranks on websites, I'm going to try as hard as I possibly can not to post any here. That being said, I may well fall for some prank on another site and post it here as news - but I certainly won't post anything I know is a prank.

See you then.

Aaron

Minute Doesn't Quite Win It

Let me make one thing clear here: I have seen game shows much worse then Minute To Win It. This show isn't great, but it's entirely watchable. What isn't entirely watchable is the hype surrounding it.

How does the show work? It's a money ladder stunt show...and that's pretty much it. The contestant starts out with three lives. If the stunt is successfully completed, we advance on the money ladder towards $1,000,000; if the stunt is lost, the contestant loses a live. Of course you can quit after successfully completing a stunt, but once you say you want to go for it, you are committed to that stunt until you either win or run out of lives. That's it. There aren't even any lifelines\cheats\backups\helps\whatever. Host Guy Fieri does a good enough job, the set is a stereotypical post-Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? game show set, the disembodied voice explaining the stunts got annoying fast, and I'm not even sure there was any music. In short, this perfectly fits the current game show stereotype - so why is it being promoted as a show that will forever change the way America thinks of game shows?

I'm serious. Commercials for Minute To Win It - some even aired during the show itself - showed people practicing the stunts in their homes and in public parks, and dozens of people all shouting together "You've got a Minute To Win It!" I suppose to some extent this is expected of any new primetime game show, but most of those are quiz shows, and it's not too hard to practice quiz questions. Nobody's going to set up these stunts in a public park, certainly not when it's likely most of them have been done countless times on shows such as Beat The Clock and Double Dare. Even if we accept the ad campaign as plain old promotion, why air the ads in the show itself? Does NBC really believe this show is going to change anything? It looks to me like they might.

It gets worse, however, when we move from the network to game show fans, who immediately dismissed this show (an American format) as a ripoff of the British series The Cube. Every now and then, a show premieres in some other country that game show fans immediately latch onto, saying that when this show comes to America, it will forever change things. I remember when it was Millionaire (which lived up to the hype)...then The Weakest Link (which burned itself out pretty fast)...then Deal Or No Deal (ditto). I've heard a lot of game show fans say, essentially "What is this Minute To Win It nonsense? We want the real The Cube!" What difference will it make? From what I've heard, the major difference between Minute To Win It and The Cube is that on The Cube, contestants do the stunts inside the eponymous Plexiglas structure. Is that seriously going to make a difference?

So there we go. Minute To Win It...perfectly enjoyable, but it's not going to lead to anyone setting up Beat The Clock-type stunts in public parks, and I seriously doubt The Cube would either. Is it genuinely time to move on from the Millionaire model of game shows? Maybe...but how can you do that when you still have a $1,000,000 money ladder?

I'll have my first impressions of High School Quiz Show next week.

Aaron

No Real News This Week...

Here's a few bits and pieces:

• Jack Dee will again be the host of the upcoming Series 53 of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. That's no surprise, but the BBC still hasn't outright said that he's the new permanent host, and until they do, I have to keep recapping the show. Just A Minute is currently filling this time slot; The Unbelievable Truth starts its season on March 29 and The Museum Of Curiosity on May 10. By my estimate, ISIHAC will return on June 21.
• The episode of High School Quiz Show I saw will air on April 5. The show premieres March 22.
• Also on March 22, and continuing for a whole week, Monty Hall will be co-hosting Let's Make A Deal with Wayne Brady.

That's about it. I guess March 22 is going to be a big day. I'll be back next week with a review of the new show Minute To Win It, which premieres March 14.

Aaron

Instantly Beat My Expectations...

Let me make one thing clear here: there was exactly one reason that I watched the premiere of Instant Recall, and that was the host. In early 2010, it was announced that Wink Martindale would be hosting a new show...and that was it. We didn't know what show, what channel, or anything else...and I got excited anyway. I jumped to conclusions so much that I figured this was going to be - and I quote my February 4 post here - "some wonderful new revival that would replace As The World Turns and put Wink on CBS five days a week."

It wasn't until weeks later that we found out that the show was called Instant Recall, was on Game Show Network, and was built around one of the dumbest concepts for a game show I've ever heard. To quote my February 4 post again "a contestant is put into a Candid Camera-type practical joke situation. As with all shows of this sort, hidden cameras film his\her reaction. After being told that it's a joke, the contestant is asked a set of questions about what just happened and can win cash and prizes by answering correctly."

So I wasn't expecting much; in fact, I said on February 4 that "that's one of the few game show ideas that should have a washed-up comedian as the host." What I wasn't expecting was that Game Show Network was aware that Wink was a lot better than this concept, and decided to really play up his presence. When Wink makes his entrance after the contestants are told they're on TV, it's accompanied by an entourage of models, studio audience members, etc. after which a set is set up that looks like...well, like a stereotypical 1970s game show set. In short, what they're trying to do here is play up the contrast between the "modern" hidden camera stuff and the "old-style" game shows represented by Wink, and admittedly, you can't do that with a washed-up comedian.

That's not to say this is a great show...far from it. The prize budget is low even by Game Show Network standards (with two games in a half hour episode, the biggest winner in the premiere won $2,000 and an iPod) and let's face it, we didn't need the superimposed comments, supposedly by Wink, that showed up even during the game show segment. Still, I eventually realized that my expectations were so low anything could have beaten them, and sure enough, this did. It was fun. It's far from an advancement of the genre, but that's not the point.

Aaron

None Of This Is Confirmed...

It does look very likely right now that we will have a new game show in the fall on CBS to replace As The World Turns. While I should stress that this is more rumor than anything else, I thought I'd give my thoughts on each of the shows that are reported as being in the running for the slot. Let's take this in no particular order, and with the company that owns each show listed next to the show's name:

Pyramid (Sony): The frontrunner apparently, and while it wouldn't be my first choice, it's always a good show to have around. It's probably time someone went ahead and did The $1,000,000 Pyramid (and let's face it, that's what this would be).

Catch Phrase (Hasbro): No, not the show Art James hosted, but rather an adaptation of the board game. I own a lot of board games, but not this one, so I looked on Hasbro's site for the instructions. Catch Phrase, as far as I can tell...is just a variation on Pyramid. The big difference: rather than one team trying to get as many words as possible before time runs out, once one team guesses a word, it's the other team's turn. When time runs out, the team whose turn it is loses the round. That's it. CBS, if you're going to revive Pyramid, revive Pyramid. Frankly, I'd rather have Password anyway...oh, wait...

Password (Fremantle): I would love to see more Password, but with both Pyramid and Catch Phrase in the mix, I'm guessing it's highly unlikely. Oh well.

Apples To Apples (Mattel): Yes, you read that right. This is a board game I do own, and it's one of the least likely things to translate to television you could possibly imagine. Frankly, I'd rather have this than Catch Phrase, if only so I can see how it comes together, but I wouldn't want it at the expense of a proven success.

Press Your Luck (Fremantle): Probably my first choice of the shows on this list. I would love to see this come back...it would fit in perfectly with The Price Is Right and Let's Make A Deal...and let's face it, it's not going to happen.

Dirty Rotten Cheater (Jonathan Goodson): Believe it or not, this would be my second choice. I don't think it flopped by any fault of the show itself, but simply because nobody watched Pax in primetime. If CBS were to give this one a try, I think it could really work...but it's not a name people know.

The Dating Game (Sony): Please, please, NO.

The Money Maze: I think the fact that I don't know who owns this show proves I don't want it back. It would be better than The Dating Game, though.

There you have it! Looks like we're going to get a word game. Let me stress one more time than this is all more rumor than anything else...but as there's no real news this week...

Aaron