Subject line inspired by the apperance of Jordan Knight on Identity last night. How sad is it that his "Identity" is now something in doubt, and that the woman had no clue who he was. Sort of insulting you'd think.
The subject also refers to night 3's ratings which are holding tight at Tuesday's levels. The show won it's slot in homes and demos and was the #2 show of the night in 18-49s. This is on par with what 1 vs. 100 is doing, so don't be surprised to see the show slotted permanently if this keeps up.
While Identity is still semi interesting to me, I think I've found what annoys me most about the show--the host. Penn is a good comic and a genuinely funny guy, but his voice just grates on me. And he's responsible for the second worst part of the show, the ungodly slow pacing. It's only 12 guesses. They could easily play 3 full games in an hour, so why do they drag things out so horribly?
Is there anything classier than Christmas episodes on Price? No other game ever decorates and works with the holiday better than this show. GSN, back when they had Price, aired a Xmas TPiR marathon and it was an absolute treat, so it's good to see the show continuing the tradition.
Night 2 numbers for Identity were far off its initial night, although it did win its slot in 18-49s. Tonight's numbers may tell the tale--any more erosion may be a bad sign.
A friend of mine at work (hardly a game show fan) bemused that, while seeing the promos for Identity, "All these shows look the same."
I of course dismissed him, but halfway through the premiere episode I can't help but agree with him. NBC seems to have a stock game show "look" and they don't shy away from exploiting it. It seems like all their shows have:
* The friend and family corner * A money ladder * Drawn out reveals * People standing in front of numbers * A play-at-home game during the commercials * Melodramatic commercial breaks
Not to mention that between 1 vs. 100 and Identity there are even more similarities, such as "locking in" ("sealing in" on Identity) and "Helps".
Identity by itself is okay, it's semi-engaging but again I think the bit gets old very quick. Of course I said that about Deal or No Deal and here it is a year later getting great ratings.
Penn just doesn't seem to fit here, he seems even less suited for this kind of show than Bob Saget does on 1 vs. 100.
One thing I can't seem to get: When the person's identity is revealed, they show a tidbit like: "This stranger did such and such." Well, with the person's identity now known, how are they stranger anymore?
Also, I doubt they actually knew this when developing the game, but the overall format does come off very similar to a little known board game from the 1990s called "Real People" that I played a total of two times when growing up.
Show Me the Money was finally shown the door today, and it looks like the remaining episodes may never see the light of day. Since the 2006 game show revival is being compared to the 1999 game show revival, I thought it might be worth crunching the numbers.
The two instigators of the revivals were Millionaire and Deal, respectively. No doubt both of these shows will go down in game show history as significant entries in their genre. But how do the imitators match up?
1999-2000:
Greed - 40+ episodes Twenty-One - 20+ episodes Winning Lines - Less than 10 episodes
2006:
Rich List - 1 episode Show Me the Money - 5 episodes 1 vs. 100 - at least 15 Identity - ??
Seems to me like the public is a bit less receptive this time around, and networks are much quicker to swing the axe than they were 7 years ago. The big question is, will the oversupply of game shows (and growing number of cancellations) put a halt to the rampant development work at other networks (I mean, someone wants to bring back Child's Playfor Pete's sake)?
Unless Identity really storms out of the gate next week, I'm afraid the 2006 revival will end up looking a lot less impressive than it's big sister.
ABC picked up 6 more episodes of Show Me the Money a few days ago, just in time for the show to plummet 20% in the ratings from its already-far-from-spectacular tally of last week. Am I the only one who thinks this doesn't make sense, or is ABC just that desperate?
Not to say I don't like the show. It frustrates me far less than Deal or no Deal, although I think I find 1 vs. 100 a little more engaging. Last night's SMTM was a decent ep., but again the question difficulty was all over the map. It would make sense if the earlier questions are supposed to be easier, but they don't indicate that, and if anything it seems the questions get easier after a miss. I really can't figure out what's going on there.
I've also heard the Killer Card may be worked out of the show in later episodes. Not sure how they're going to pull that off.
Kudos to GSN for yet another good documentary this weekend. I really think the Chuck Barris biopic was even better than the MG doc from two weeks back, probably because it was a subject I knew less about. But it really was a well-done hour. The interviews were fantastic and I really think they captured the essence of what Barris was doing on TV.
I never knew how much of a backlash there was against him back then; seems kinda funny seeing the far worse stuff that is on TV now. They didn't rehash much of the "Confessions..." stuff, which is good, since that movie covered most of the secret agent stuff pretty well.
The best part may have been discussing the tragedy of his daughter, and I think the producers handled it with the utmost class.
The only thing missing...3's a Crowd. Obviously it was a blip on his radar, but I thought it was the show that got some of the most negative reviews.
Everyone who was anyone was in this...Barris staffers, Bob Eubanks, even Jim Lange narrating. A top-rate job from start to finish.
*On Monday's Price, they played Joker. Of course that's not funny by itself (usually it's just sad), but the models got caught in a tug-of-war with the small prize podium, not knowing whether to turn it left or right. Bob caught wind of this and went over there and gave them a countdown to turn it the correct way. Of course, the current prize was already lined up when he told them to do it, so they didn't really know what to do, and then there was an awkward pause before Rich started to give the prize description.
*On today's Wheel, the bonus round prize wheel landed at the edge of the rung on the "O" in Bonus. Exactly at the time the contestant pulled the envelope out, it slipped over to B. Cut to a split second look of panic on Pat's face, followed by the plausible explanation of "Well, it was on the O when you went for it."
I'd rather not. "myGames Fever" debuts Monday and that now makes 3 entrants in the Playmania field. That's just way too crowded in my opinion. PlayMania is engaging and fun, Play2Win is God awful, and frankly the promos for mGF don't look much better to be honest. What a sad waste of TV dial real estate. Let's get some good syndie games on and engage the audience with something more than dressed up anagrams with ditzy hosts.
And what's up with this dreaded "My XXXXX" moniker showing up everywhere. MyNetworkTV is definitely not..."my network". My network would have far less crappy telenovelas and crummy local news.
Another satisfactory 1 vs. 100 episode tonight. The cameo by Wink and Bob makes it a keeper, although neither did particularly well and a stunning number of people went out on some easy questions.
In general the material was pretty darn easy tonight, which led to the 2nd contestant reaching a new pinnacle of mob remove-ness. Still she played her Helps too conservatively and ended up leaving before the game could have gotten really interesting.
Fun thing in tonight's episode, they started showing stats on some mob members that have been around a very long time (30 answers in one case). That has to go back at least 3 shows. It would stink to be on that long and win so little money (or none at all!)
Maybe it's time to increase the frequency of higher numbers on the Punch Board board? I can't remember the last time anyone even won $1,000 on that game, let alone $10,000.
Show Me the Money continues to trend downward in the ratings, dropping precipitously below the 5.0 rating mark last night. Still, the buzz seems to be that the show has been picked up for more episodes and contestant searches continue unabated.
The only real thing saving the show right now may be that the rest of ABC's Wednesday lineup is doing even worse.
Meanwhile last night's episode was enjoyable, although the difficulty between questions is all over the place. We went from asking what street the White House is on to some obscure French historical figure in a heartbeat, and the Killer Card question for the first contestant was off the charts in difficulty.
Also, it is still unnerving to see the credits start flying by before the last contestant has gotten his good-byes. And Shatner's plugs for Boston Legal are getting to be a bit too much. I'm guessing he negotiated that into his contract because otherwise it seems kinda dumb.
The military coup in Fiji is apparently having a direct effect on the filming of the next season of Survivor. However, at least accordingly to the CNN article, only a few crew members have left and the shooting should go on unaffected.
The article was interesting because it basically spoiled the location of the next season of the series, which is usually a tight-lipped secret until the reunion show of the previous season.
It's the corporate Sandy Frank site, including nearly an entire episode of Face the Music available to watch. As I played it today it made me realize what a solid format it was and how impossible it must have been to write for.
I never really enjoyed it as a kid when it was played ad nauseum on CBN/USA/The Family Channel, but I can appreciate it now. Of course adding to the good format was the nearly unpredictable actions of Ron Ely and the band, including a number of times in which Ron would order the band to play a song again when he thought they butchered it.
Did anyone notice anything...different...on 1 vs. 100 tonight? Actually, multiple anythings seemed new and exciting tonight, namely:
1) New on-screen graphics 2) Swanky set changes that allow for psychedelic color combinations to appear behind the contestant. 3) Hmm what else?
Oh yes, completely different rules. The ladder structure was completely thrown on its head, with the first two "rungs" now requiring 3 and 2 consecutive correct answers, respectively, to get through. This also limits the number of questions after which a contestant can quit.
Lastly, they added a 3rd help, "Trust the Mob", which forces you to take the mob's choice of highest plurality. You can also now choose which help you want to use, which is a nice addition.
I really didn't have much of an issue with any of these changes (especially getting to pick which help you want to use, that was a great add), but Bob kinda glossed over these additions as if they'd always been a part of the show. I thought I was watching an unaired pilot for the first few minutes.
I also found myself asking a few questions about some of these helps, namely with bizarre corner cases and how they would play out at later stages of the game:
1) If a contestant picks Ask the Mob and all the mob members chose the same answer, what happens? Similarly, what if no one in the Mob has the right answer? 2) If the contestant picks Trust the Mob and two of the choices are tied amongst the Mob, what happens? What if there's a 3-way split?
