Hooray, GSN has a Grand Slam game online. Basically, if you answer 5 questions right in 60 seconds, you move to the next round.
The first time I played it, I didn’t get past the General Knowledge round. But the second time, I got 5th place on the leaderboard! :-D
Go check it out here.
The ratings page has been updated. Included are ratings for the syndicated shows and Power of 10. Power of 10 got a little ratings boost from the Big Brother crossover, but has stayed in the same area always, showing a nice loyal audience for the show. Don’t be surprised to see it back in the Fall as a replacement, much like 1 VS 100 on NBC. The syndicated shows essentially stayed the same except for Millionaire, which just lost two-tenths of a point.
In the week of absolutely no game show news, we finally found some! Thanks to reader Mark O. who sent us a story from the Winnipeg Sun that one of the funniest people on the planet, Colin Mochrie, will be the host of the five episode Canadian Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? run. “We’re delighted to have Colin on board,” said Barbara Williams, senior vice president of programming and production for CanWest MediaWorks in a statement. “His unrivalled wit and ability to engage and entertain audiences will be front and centre, and we look forward to all of the fun.” Episodes are being taped in Toronto this Fall and will air on Global.
That means that every single Whose Line is it Anyway? regular has a show. Drew has Power of 10 (which will probably return in the Fall) and The Price is Right, Wayne has Don’t Forget the Lyrics, and Colin has this. What’s Ryan been up to recently? I’d love to see him back on TV somewhere.
FOX’s newest game show, Nothing But the Truth, is now casting. In the show, they ask you up to 21 moral and personal questions in different categories. If you answer it truthfully, you get money. You could win up to $500,000 for basically being truthful about how awful of a person you are. So if you thought Without Prejudice? needed more awkwardness, then FOX has the answer for you. Click here to try your luck. Just a warning: If you’ve lived a pretty decent life with no huge secrets, you probably won’t be selected. Come on! Decent people?! That doesn’t make for good television!
GSN’s stealing our thunder (*sobs*). On Saturday, September 1st, after the semi-finals on GSN’s Grand Slam you will have the ability to talk to the contenders after their matches air. This will go on from 8PM to 9PM ET. To participate, go to the Grand Slam website and login on Saturday, September 1st, and chat along. Of course we will have people like Ogi Ogas, Michelle Kitt, and more providing their informative and extremely fun commentary here still, so be sure to chat with them as well. If you haven’t read the most recent post, you need to. The comments so far are probably better than anything I’ve written on this site before.
Massive update on the ratings page today. Power of 10 is continuing to show that you don’t need a huge winner every show to be exciting. Wins of $10,000 are just as fun and exciting as million wins. GSN’s July ratings came in as well, and they aren’t too pretty. GSN’s main issue, in my eyes, is primetime. Daytime is fine, but primetime is an absolute disaster area. GSN needs a more stable line of originals. The cheap daytime shows like Lingo in primetime are not cutting it. Look back to how things were in 2001-2002, when ratings were very high. It apparently worked then; it can work again when game shows are actually a hot item. Also, don’t be afraid to throw some classics in primetime. You can’t tell me that Family Feud and Match Game can get any lower ratings than Dog Eat Dog, Weakest Link, or really overrun originals like Chain Reaction.
Remember when GSN made a huge deal about The Amazing Race’s pickup? That fizzled out rather quickly, didn’t it? I think it’s on post-midnight a few days a week. Apparently it’s not as exclusive and as huge as it used to be. FOX Reality has apparently picked up the series and is starting to air them today, Sunday, August 26th, at 4PM ET. They are starting with the first series in a marathon on sorts. Speaking of FOX Reality, has anyone seen their original series Solitary? I found out about it from Bother’s Bar. It’s actually incredibly fun to watch in some sick and twisted sort of way. It’s a lot like the Cube horror movies without all the blood and guts (for the most part). It’s a lot better than a good deal of GSN’s original programming as of late. Edit: Thanks to emailers telling us that the All-Star episodes were airing despite what my guide said this morning.
Thanks to reader Will Matthews for giving us this information. Bob Saget was apparently on Howard Stern’s Sirius radio show today. He stated he is going back to the studio to tape episodes of 1 VS 100 in two weeks. As we know things can change easily and Bob may just be going by some old information. However, at least we have some actual source rather close to the show giving us some decent information. If anyone has HBO, be sure to look for Bob Saget’s latest stand up special, as it’ll be repeated a lot within the next few days. I caught it this morning and it is hysterical.
Is it just me, or is it getting very difficult to call the Grand Slam games recently? It seems most of my calls have been on such petty items that it seems more like a guess than anything else. Anyway, on today’s Grand Slam on GSN at 7PM ET, we see Ken Jennings face off against Phyllis Harris and Michelle Kitt versus John Carpenter. Let’s take a look at Jennings/Harris.
This one is tricky because of how they both stand. Jennings is obviously a trivia giant and used to the speed of a game because of Jeopardy!. Phyllis Harris has been on roughly two million game shows and has experience across the board; on shows that require and don’t require speed. I’m going to actually go with Phyllis Harris to win. As I saw in Ken Jenning’s initial round, he’s awesome at trivia but not as much on the word and math round. Phyllis is very well rounded because of her massive game show experience and that will easily come in handy. Where Jennings gets her on trivia she can easily make up on words, logic, and math. I’m calling Phyllis Harris to beat Ken Jennings.
And now we come to the other match: Michelle Kitt versus John Carpenter. I’ve been talking to a few people about this one, and I am truly stumped. John Carpenter is, again, one of those masters of trivia obviously. He answered 25 Millionaire-level questions correctly without a lifeline; 28 out of 30 in total. However, Who Wants to be a Millionaire does not involve any remote amount of speed thinking. This is where Michelle Kitt might have an advantage. It took me a bit of time to realize it, but think about this: Weakest Link and Grand Slam are very similar in the style of the game. The only huge difference is the voting. Michelle Kitt’s game involved trivia, words, logic, math, and more under intense time pressure. You have to be the perfect player to make it to the end and win over $100,000 on that show. Sadly, I have no clear opinion of who will win this one. On just some weird hunch I’m going to say that Michelle Kitt beats John Carpenter and I am completely ready to be totally wrong. What are your pre game and post game thoughts? If we’re lucky, maybe Ms. Kitt can tell us of her experience on the show.
NBC has put the kibosh on the primetime preview of Merv Griffin’s Crosswords, previously scheduled for Saturday, September 8. Instead, NBC will air an installment of Most Outrageous Moments at 8 PM Eastern and the NBC Fall Preview Special at 8:30 PM Eastern.
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