Yes, I Know...

When I wrote my post last week about Family Game Night and Pictureka, there were quite a few things I wanted to bring up - some related to The Hub and some not - that I left out simply for the sake of a clearer post. Well...I'm going to throw them all at you this week. Without further ado...

• Yes, I know what the really big piece of news is right now - the five-day-a-week version of 1 vs. 100 will premiere November 15 on Game Show Network. The grand prize is $50,000, and the mob will be recorded separately from the rest of the show. The host is...keep an open mind...Dancing With The Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba.
• Yes, I know that the Massachusetts Lottery has released the names of the winners from the first The Price Is Right Las Vegas trip drawing...I'm not one of them. I've already bought another ticket and entered it into the second drawing.  It looks like this "special show of The Price Is Right Live" is in February 2011, and isn't just for the Massachusetts Lottery but rather all the state lotteries participating. There's no announcement yet on when the second drawing will be.
• Yes, I know that Hasbro has found a different way to promote one of it's board games - they have announced that The Hub will at some point premiere a live-action kids mystery series inspired by (or at least named after) the board game Clue. I don't know when this will premiere, and frankly, I don't care. The fact is that Hasbro announced a lot of high-profile shows for The Hub (such as new Transformers and G.I. Joe cartoons) that show no signs of premiering.
• Yes, I know that The Hub began on October 16 to show reruns of Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?, the cartoon that originally ran on Fox. That's not the same, OK? The cartoon has been rerun plenty of times, and it was just announced that a complete series DVD set will be released at some point in 2011; meanwhile, the game show has never resurfaced after leaving PBS.
• Yes, I know that one of the British kids game shows I mentioned last week, The Slammer, isn't really a kids game show or even, strictly speaking, a game show; however, it is a show that I really, really, want to see. It's a talent show built around the idea that the acts (all adults) are inmates competing for parole in front of an audience of kids. Of course, this is completely fictitious and staged; however the mere fact that in Britain, that's an acceptable concept for a kids show says a lot about America.
• Finally, yes, I know that Hasbro is preparing a special (or at least I think that's what it is) called Extreme Family Game Night Challenge. The idea: families will submit videos of them playing Hasbro games, and the two that Hasbro likes best will be flown to Orlando to compete in a final televised showdown...on Nickelodeon. The winning family will then be flown to Los Angeles to see the 2011 Kids Choice Awards...which are on Nickelodeon. That's all I know. Come on Hasbro, do you really have that little faith in The Hub?

That's enough for now. I'll get to all these things as they come.

Aaron

Still Hope For The Hub

I'm going to try to be realistic here.

The Hub is a kids channel, so it's not going to show the game show Scrabble. More than that, The Hub is an American kids channel, so it's not going to show all the British kids game shows I want to see (such as Knightmare or The Slammer). Even more than that, The Hub is an American kids channel owned by Hasbro, so it's not going to show all the kids game shows I remember from my childhood (most notably Carmen Sandiego).What The Hub will do is adapt Hasbro's board games into stereotypical noisy kids game shows...and guess what? They did a pretty good job of it.

In Family Game Night (which had a preview episode on TLC on October 9 before premiering on The Hub on October 10), Todd Newton plays host to two families (parents and two kids). As with Hole In The Wall, we don't learn these families' real last names; they are known throughout the show by the name of one of their kids (the preview episode was Johnny's Family versus Diego's Family). Each family is also introduced via the sort of introduction video you only find on a kids game show - you know, the kind that goes "Hi, I'm Timmy and this is my mom Mary. She's a great cook..."

These two families are there to compete in five games in each episode, inspired, of course, by various Hasbro board games. The family that wins each game gets to pick one of the terribly named Monopoly Crazy Cash Cards, each of which has a money amount attached to it (and before you scoff at the prize budget, you should know that these money amounts are quite high; one card is worth a five-digit number). At the beginning of the show, each family is given one card for free to start. At the end of the show, the cards are put in a reader and we see the money amounts attached to them, and the family with the most money gets the grand prize trip.

So what are the games? Well, perhaps surprisingly, they're pretty creative and cool. Guesstures involves playing charades while in a harness high above the studio; Boggle sees the families jumping from square to square on a floor size letter board. That's not to say all the games are winners - Cranium amounts to little more than a bog standard quiz, and it won't be long before Connect Four (in which the families must toss color-coded balls into a giant version of the namesake game's board) gets old - but the ones that work outweigh the ones that don't (and looking at other game shows with rotating rounds - such as The Price Is Right - do you like every game in rotation?)

The set's quite large and impressive, Todd Newton can host just about anything, and the prize budget is amazing for a brand new kids cable channel; not only do both families keep their money, but the winner of each game gets an extra bonus prize. In short, Hasbro clearly put a lot more effort into this show than you'd expect from the description "Families play mini-games based on various board games." That's still not a great premise for a game show, but if you must go with it, this is about as good as it could be done.

So we come to Pictureka, which premiered October 11. The show opens with an animated opening sequence and a pretty bad lyrical theme song -something like "Pictureka...Find It Fast...Find It First..." Cory Almeida (a comedian, as far as I can tell) plays host to two families (one parent and two kids). Yet again, we don't learn these families' real last names; they are known on this show simply by team colors (the premiere was the green team versus the yellow team). Each family is introduced via an incomprehensible animation that is apparently supposed to represent their interests. They are there to play what essentially amounts to a hidden picture game - Cory starts at the start of the show that the object is to collect fish to feed the show's penguin mascot, but this theming doesn't seem to extend beyond referring to each family's score, for the entire show, as being in "fish points." At the beginning of the show, in one of the dumbest opening rounds you can possibly imagine, the families are given fifteen seconds to just run around grabbing fish point coupons from the hands of audience members.

Fortunately, the show improves from there. One round features the families searching block pyramids for different pictures; another has each family tied together as they run around the set looking for pictures. At the end of the show, the family with the most fish points plays a bonus round in which they are shown, for ten seconds, a grid of nine pictures; they then have one minute thirty seconds to find those pictures and place them in the appropriate squares. If they get the correct picture in the bonus square on the grid, they win the grand prize trip.

It's not bad. It's not great, but the set is impressive and while Cory does fall a little into the kids game show "try to be hip" trap, at least he isn't Teck Holmes. I have seen game shows -and, indeed, kids game shows - that are much worse than this.

I'm not delusional. These aren't the greatest game shows ever or even the greatest kids game shows ever, and I know they exist mostly to promote Hasbro board games. Still, I thought these shows were fun, and an eight-year-old me would have loved them. As I said, I'm going to try to be realistic. The Hub isn't going to do any of the shows I hoped it would do, but I hope the shows it does succeed.

Aaron

Let's See The HOLE IN CARTOON NETWORK'S SCHEDULE!

Let me start by saying this: I never saw the Fox version of Hole In The Wall, so I can't compare it to the version that premiered last night on Cartoon Network. By all accounts, the primetime version was awful, but I'm going to try to judge the kids version on its own merits, OK?

Here's my judgement: it's a disaster.

Teck Holmes, who screams most of what he says, plays host to two families (each composed of a parent and two of that parent's children). We don't learn these families' real last names; they are known throughout the show by team names. To use the premiere as an example, it's not the Jones family versus the Smith family; it's "The Good, The Bad, And The Stepdad" versus "Mama Trucker And The Mudflaps". These two families walk onstage in bizarre silver jumpsuits and color-coded helmets. They also trash talk each other a lot, which sounds dumb - but believe me, that's about the only thing you can do to pad out this game. The premise of this globally exported format: the host screams out "Let's see the HOLE IN THE WALL!". The audience counts down three seconds. A wall comes at you. There is a hole in it. If you get through the hole, you get points; if you don't, you fall into a pool.

In round one, all three members of each family try to get through the wall; they get ten points for each family member who succeeds. In round two, one member of each family puts on a blindfold helmet and must be directed on how to get through the wall by their teammates (cue the parents standing motionless while their kids are screaming instructions); they get ten points if they succeed. In round three only two members of each family face the wall; they again get ten points for each member who doesn't fall into the pool. In round four, two members of each family are spun around by the opposing family, so they are supposedly dizzy when the wall comes at them; they get twenty points for each family member who gets through. The family with the most points then gets a Hole In The Wall trophy (and nothing else) and plays the final Impossiwall (no, really) for a place on the Wall Of Fame (and nothing else) if all three family members get through.

If that format sounds flat out idiotic...it is, and that's not even the worst part. I could go on for a while here: no prizes, bland music, endless replays of each fall, an audience that appears to have been told to be as loud as possible...get the idea? Going back to my review of Downfall in June, this is what that show would have been if they hadn't come up with an entertaining game and a decent host to back up their gimmick. I suppose it fits in better on Cartoon Network that it would have in primetime, and an eight-year-old me probably would have thought it was fun...but I think the fact that, while this is a Japanese format, it's a five-minute segment on a variety show in Japan says a lot.

I'll have reviews of The Hub's new kids game shows (Family Game Night and Pictureka) next week.

Aaron

I'm Going Out Of Town!

...which means I don't have time to write a full post.

A few bits and pieces of news:

• As I said in July, the short-lived primetime show Hole In The Wall is being revived as a kids game show on Cartoon Network. It premieres October 6. The host is Teck Holmes (a former housemate on The Real World, apparently).
• Hasbro's "The Hub" channel starts October 10; the new kids game show Family Game Night will premiere that day. A preview episode will air October 9 on TLC. The host is Todd Newton.
• The Hub's other kids game show, Pictureka, premieres October 11. The host is Cory Almeida.
• I've tracked down the names of the two people from that The Price Is Right audition I went to in June that CBS is going to fly to Los Angeles...needless to say, I didn't make it. Congratulations to Barbara J. Bodner and Christina Marie Patenaude I guess.

That might do it at the moment.

I'll be back next week.

Aaron

It Took Me Four Hours To Watch Them All...

Well, that's the new season premieres. Monday brought new seasons of Let's Make A Deal, The Price Is Right, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and Don't Forget The Lyrics.

Let's Make A Deal: No changes whatsoever from the previous year. That's a good thing.

Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?: The rumors were true: the game has been scaled down yet again. There are now just eight questions on the board: two first grade (worth $500 each), two second grade (worth $1,000 each), two third grade (worth $3,500 each), and two fourth grade (worth $7,500 each.) If you have any money in your bank after that, you can risk it on a fifth grade question that, if answered correctly, multiplies your bank by ten. The cheats are just Peek and Copy (no more Save), and with three fifth graders, I still have no idea how they divide up the questions.

This isn't a bad show, but it's clearly on its last legs. With that format and no rollover, there is (A) a lot of padding and (B) little chance for the contestant to win anything, let alone the $250,000. Let's face it, this is probably the last season for Jeff Foxworthy and the kids. Oh, and one more note - the show double runs (two back-to-back episodes) in my area, but the second episode was a rerun from last year.

Don't Forget The Lyrics: It's the five-day-a-week premiere, and the board consists of -get this- four categories. The money ladder: $1,000, $2,500, $5,000, $10,000. If you get through the money ladder without missing, you can risk it all on the "Encore Song" for $50,000. If I have my information right, your first miss takes out the Encore Song, making the maximum prize $10,000; if you miss a second time, the game is over. The contestant also has - get this - one backup (Three Lines). The live band has been replaced by the "Myspace Karaoke." In short, this is about as scaled down as you can possibly get, and there is an endless amount of padding. Still, I was fairly impressed by Mark McGrath's performance, and let's face it, there are worse things on in the daytime. This won't last long, but it will be fun while it does.

The Price Is Right: I've been dreading this one. Rich Fields is no longer the announcer, and a couple new ones are being tried out on air; the episodes I saw had J.D. Roberto. I no longer care. More than any other, this show needs a rest. I'm won't discuss this much out of fear of enticing wrath, but suffice to say the show was past its prime long before Bob Barker retired, Drew Carey has failed to reinvigorate it, and now it's just time to stop.
I really just blew my chance of getting picked by that casting call I went to in June, didn't I?

Aaron

At Last!

The new season is here! Monday brought the season premieres of Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and Family Feud. Let's take a look at this show by show:

Wheel Of Fortune: The season premiere was taped in Las Vegas...the smallest prize on the bonus round wheel is now $30,000...yeah, I don't really care. This show isn't changing much any time soon.

Jeopardy: Apparently on Tuesday, contestant Roger Craig won $77,000 on his second day, topping the one-day record of $75,000 set by - of course - Ken Jennings. Also, at some point this season there will be a special pitting an IBM Jeopardy playing computer called Watson against some former contestants (please, please, don't be Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter). That's about it. Come on, were you honestly expecting some major changes to Jeopardy?

Family Feud: The show is now taped at Universal Studios in Orlando, complete with shots of roller coasters during the opening. Last season's Bullseye round has been taken out; the round sequence is now Single, Single, Double, Triple, Sudden Death, and the first family to reach 300 points plays Fast Money for $20,000. The horrific family introduction videos have also thankfully been taken out; however before Fast Money, the winning family is wished good luck by some random person staying at a Comfort Inn somewhere in the country. Steve Harvey is better here than he was guest hosting Millionaire, but does seem to be trying to make this show into a comedy club; still, this is a hard game to ruin completely. Oh, and the new announcer, who even gets to name check himself in the opening: Joey Fatone!

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?: Take a deep breath; the new rules of Millionaire make little sense written down. The game is now played in two rounds. Round one has ten questions and ten money amounts ranging from $100 to $25,000. Both the questions and money amounts are shuffled randomly, meaning the first question could be the hardest on the board and still be worth $100. The money amount attached to each question is not revealed until after the question is answered; if the contestant gets it right, that amount is added to their bank. The lifelines have been redone almost completely; we still have Ask The Audience, but the other two lifelines are both Jump The Question, which allows you to move on to the next question - but you don't get the money amount attached to the question you jumped. You can walk away on any question in round one, but if you do so, you only get half of what's in your bank. If, by some miracle, you get through ten questions of this, round two contains four questions in classic Millionaire style: $100,000, $250,000, $500,000, $1,000,000. If you miss a question in round two, you go home with your bank from round one. The clock has been dropped completely; however so has the iconic hot seat, replaced by a podium.

This is by no stretch of the imagination bad. It's actually an improvement over what we had last year, with the clock and the worthless Ask The Expert lifeline...yet how much can you change Millionaire before it just isn't Millionaire anymore? This has little in common with the show as originally played; however, if it were launched under a different title, I probably wouldn't even be watching, so I suppose I should be happy. Look at it this way: it beats the awful multiplayer "Millionaire Hot Seat" format currently used in Australia.

Next week: The Price Is Right, Let's Make A Deal, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, and Don't Forget The Lyrics!

As for Cash Cab...frankly, I'm starting to think the deal didn't go through.

Aaron

Labor Day Has Come And Gone...

Nothing was going to premiere that day, but still, Labor Day has come and gone. As I have one more week to fill before the new shows start, I'm going to talk about something that really hits home now that my state is participating: that The Price Is Right Live stage show in Las Vegas has become a glorified lottery game show.

First, a little background. There has for years been a live stage show of The Price Is Right at a casino in Las Vegas - I think it was launched as a result of the success of The Price Is Right 30th Anniversary Special in 2002, which was taped in Las Vegas (and by "success", I mean I think it caused a riot). I haven't been to it, but as far as I can tell it's a heavily scaled down version of the television show, with the same pricing games every time (if I have my information right: Plinko, Clock Game, Hole In One, Race Game, Cliff Hangers, It's In The Bag). Despite this, the stage show manages to be so popular that - well, look at it this way: the current revival of Let's Make A Deal with Wayne Brady was originally taped in Las Vegas, and some predicted it would drive The Price Is Right Live out of business. A few months later, Let's Make A Deal moved taping to Los Angeles. My guess: the opposite happened.

There have been The Price Is Right scratch tickets from various state lotteries for years as well, but now the two have converged: I just bought a $5 The Price Is Right scratch ticket, failed to win the $200,000 (or anything else), and entered the ticket into a drawing that will pick thirty people who will be flown to Las Vegas to take part in a special The Price Is Right Live show for the Massachusetts Lottery.

Has it come to that? Massachusetts is not the first state to have this contest. I thought this show was so successful it drove Let's Make A Deal out of town! Why do they have to have ties to the lottery? For that matter, why does the lottery have to join up with The Price Is Right? What happened to the local lottery game show? Remember when just about every area had one? Are any of them still going?

Maybe I shouldn't be complaining. After all, The Price Is Right is an excellent game, and the Las Vegas stage show has had some great hosts (the most commonly used one is Todd Newton) - whereas local lottery game shows usually tended to be boring games of chance with terrible local hosts. I guess all there is to do now is see if I make it to Las Vegas.

Next week: season premieres of Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy, Family Feud, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Come to think of it, why hasn't Sony done stage shows for any of their game shows in Las Vegas?

Aaron