BuzzerBlog

Edit: OK, the big piece of information can finally be revealed.  The phone game that let anyone in America call up and become a millionaire on Who Wants to be a Millionaire is indeed coming back.  Starting July 6th at 7:00PM ET and running for 10 days, from July 6th through July 16th from 7:00PM ET to 3:00AM ET, call 1-800-999-7878 and play the phone game. Good luck

Not living in a location which lets you get to one of the many Who Wants to be a Millionaire auditions easily?  The crew at the ten year old quiz show just added an all-new way to get you closer to the hot seat and $1,000,000.  You can now upload an audition video to the show’s website in lieu of going to an on-site audition.  The process is basically the reverse of the usual auditions.  Make an audition video that does not last longer than two minutes.  The video, beyond the usual basic information, should involve you showing why you’d be a good contestant on the show and what you’d do with $1,000,000.  Again, it’s basically like the audition in front of the producers when you go to a casting location around the country.  Just be careful.  If your video lasts longer than two minutes, your video won’t be looked at.  Your video has to be submitted from June 29th through 3:00AM ET on July 16th.

If the producers like your video you’ll move on to an online test.  The online test looks like it’ll essentially be what the written test is during the actual casting process.  Just answer some multiple choice questions and you’re done.  The online test takes part on July 17th from 7:00PM ET to 10:00PM ET.  If you pass the test you’ll then be put in the contestant pool.  If all goes as planned at that point, you should be getting a call sometime between July 21st and July 23rd.  If you get a call from the show you’re getting a trip for you and a friend to New York City to have a chance at the million.

It looks like this process is for the ABC anniversary edition hosted by Regis Philbin, but if you pass everything you’ll stay in the contestant pool for two years to be selected for future network editions or the syndicated editions.  And there we go.  Any of you going to do this?  If you don’t live near any of the audition places I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t.  It’s a pretty easy process to make it onto the show.  Plus with the video aspect you can go all out and make a very attention-grabbing video.  It’s also a safe way for the show to make sure they get people with a slight bit of personality to get to the show.  Any opinions?  Again, if you’re going to take part in this I’d love to know.  Just click here, or the logo above, to upload your video.

Photo courtesy of Valleycrest Productions Ltd.

Fun news from yesterday afternoon: the CBS daytime pilot for Let’s Make A Deal is now casting.  If you’re in the LA area in early July with a costume handy, click here to take part.  They’ve got some good hosts lined up for you. Really good hosts.

Talk about an accidentally overlooked interview. I’m really sorry about this. It somehow got lost in the shuffle of technical problems, a long vacation, and other things.  MTV has been airing a new comedy game show called Silent Library weekdays at 5:30PM ET. Basically a team of friends have to compete in challenges in a library while not making noise to win money. It’s a pretty funny show if you watch it for the right reasons. It’s not supposed to be taken seriously; it’s a comedy. It does what it’s supposed to. Now that we got that out of the way, before I left for vacation I got to do an interview with executive producer Adam Dolgins about the show.

Silent Library has roots in Asian television, much like the FOX game show Hole in the Wall. If you’ve searchd for game shows on YouTube, most likely you’ve seen a clip of Silent Library around. As Adam Dolgins said said, “It was a big cult hit for a couple of years, then the prod. company in Japan started to shop it around the world.”

However, the tough part about adapting the show was because, again like Hole in the Wall, it really wasn’t a game show in Japan. It was just for comedy. He told us, “What was challenging about this is that in Japan the show is not a game show. It’s a segment on a long running comedy/variety show. The contestants…are all comedic actors. Everything they do… they really try to make each other laugh. It almost seemed like a game show, so we just added money and essentially made it a game show. In their version there’s no money awarded…they are just trying to remain silent. We just took it to the next logical step.”

As we see from many comedy game shows recently, the issue is blending both elements of the comedy and the game show and not drown out other segments. Executive producer Adam Dolgins said designing the show had the same issues. “The thing about the show is the hybrid. It’s a game show and a comedy. A lot of the comedy comes from the guys trying not to laugh and keep it inside. To me that’s the funniest bit. Also when the guys tried…as we designed the challenges, they couldn’t be too Fear Factor, and they couldn’t be too Double Dare.  They had to be somewhere in the middle for the MTV audience. Couldn’t be too gross and couldn’t be too silly.”

One part I always find interesting is how the producers and writers come up with these challenges, and how long it actually takes to find what works. Adam discussed this a bit with me, saying, “We had a staff of great writers who sat around brainstorming for weeks and weeks. They went through literally hundreds of ideas that has to pass through a variety of people. At some point we just figured it out. If it made everyone laugh and didn’t push the envelope in totally different directions. It took a while to figure out the sweet spot. Some of the challenges are simple…some of them are elaborate. We had an incredible spot team that worked around the clock building and stuff, building contraptions. It was a mix of high production value and low tech and simple. We tried to balance it.”

If you’ve watched the show at all like me, it’s really easy to tell that Silent Library is an easy fit for MTV. Really, can you see this on any other network? With the network trying to get more young males watching, the show works well for them. Adam said, “I think that’s why the channel is excited about it. The network is primarily male and most teams are men, we have one female team and they had a blast. But this is towards younger guys. I also produced Boiling Point, and that was a big hit for the channel…so this is sort of in the same vein. It’s a game show but also comedy. It goes into that kind of guy humor.”

I know it’s not for everyone, but take a chance to watch it if you get a chance. It’s funny and that’s all I ask for with something like this. Silent Library airs weekdays at 5:30PM ET on MTV. 20 episodes were ordered, so it’ll be on until next Friday.

The tenth anniversary edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, starting on August 9th at 8:00PM ET on ABC, is gearing up.  I don’t think I need to do a lot to excite a good deal of you, but ABC gave us some great clips celebrating the long history of arguably the most popular quiz show in the world.  We’ll be rolling these out as the debut grows closer.  For now, here’s an interview ABC has on their website featuring host Regis Philbin discussing his favorite moments on the show.

EDIT: Bother’s Bar thinks this may be a different French format called Intervilles, which aired in England under the title It’s A Knockout, which is another stunt type show.  Again, maybe someone who has seen it can explain more.  Here’s the UKGameshows page on it, and below is a YouTube link.

All you who live close to New York City, are physically fit, and have a passport may want to pay attention to this one.  Casting directors are looking for people with free time in the middle of July to take part in an all-expensive paid trip to France and be on a game show pilot.  The game show is a long-running adventurous game show.  They are basically asking for you to have a good personality, to be adventurous, and be physically fit.  They describe the show as a mix between Wipeout and American Gladiators.  If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, click here and get to it.

Now as to what this show could be.  The only thing I can find is, like the casting notice says, a long-running adventurous French game show called Fort Boyard (EDIT: See note at top).   The essential format involves a team of people completing challenges, many of them physical, to win gold from the fort.  I’ve never really seen it beyond clips from the must-see website Bother’s Bar, so maybe someone from there can explain the show more.  I’m a big fan of adventure shows and the physical stunt shows, so this seems pretty cool.  We’ll see where it takes us after the pilot is taken around.  Want to see what you’re in for?  Here are a few clips.

I wanted to show you all part of a hysterical episode of one of my favorite British shows (and one of my favorite TV shows, period).  We featured it previously.  This is called QI.  Featured in this episode is Oscar winner Emma Thompson, and the topic of the show is Films.  QI is a comedy panel show where it’s better to know interesting things, not the most obvious.  It’s a hysterically impossible panel quiz, and something I’d love to see pop up on BBC America.

Do you want to play Deal or No Deal for $500,000?  If you’re near East Hanover, NJ, you can head over to the Warnock Dodge Chrysler Jeep from 10am-2pm tomorrow, June 27th (that’s at 175 Route 10).

Casting for Who Wants to be a Millionaire’s new syndicated season, hosted by Meredith Vieira, as well as the ABC 10th anniversary edition hosted by Regis Philbin is moving away from the east coast and heading across the country.  Next stops: Texas and Missouri.  On Monday, June 29th, Millionaire will be at the Ameristar Casino in Kansas City (3200 N. Ameristar Dr., Kansas City, MO 64161).  Auditions take place from 7:00AM to 11:00AM.  If you live in Texas, be sure to catch out the audition at Pavilion Royale in Houston (5800 N. Airline Drive, Houston, TX 77076) also from 7:00AM to 11:00AM.  It’s on Wednesday, July 1st.  All you have to do is pass their test and wow the producers to get your shot at the hot seat and the $1,000,000 top prize.

Tapings for the show will be starting soon. Click here to visit the tickets page, or here to visit the casting page, for the most up to date info.

In addition, the syndicated edition of Deal or No Deal is almost set for the second season and will start taping at their new Connecticut home soon.  Tapings start on Tuesday, July 28th.  Click here to get tickets from TVTix. It should be a lot of fun.  If you’re in that area, definitely stop by and take a look.  Auditions are popping up all over the place on the east coast.  Check local papers or news sources to find more specifics.

Of course you can still get tickets to see Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, Family Feud, and The Price is Right. We’re gearing up for the new game show season.  Pretty exciting, isn’t it?

Photo courtesy of Valleycrest Productions Ltd.

Former Whose Line is it Anyway? cast member Jeff Davis, seen in a few episodes, recently said he tested for a Fremantle revival of Let’s Make A Deal, which should get a pilot eventually.  He also did a run through for a revival of The Dating Game from Embassy Row.  Both shows are being looked at as CBS daytime replacements for Guiding Light which is leaving the air soon.

CBS recently shot a pilot for their new daytime game show The $1,000,000 Pyramid, an update of the classic 80s game show The $100,000 Pyramid.  Again, like most news-worthy things, it happened while I was on vacation.  Many of you may already know about it but for those that don’t, you’ll be very happy to know the show was updated perfectly from the old version to today.”  Thanks to audience member Mitch J. for the info and pictures.  This entire pilot and potential show is just validating my point that Embassy Row is the only production company I place all my trust in to make a good, exciting, fun game show anymore.

The game is exactly like the old version.  Two teams of a contestant and a celebrity pick one of six categories.  Your celebrity partner has to try to describe up to seven items in that category to you in 30 seconds.  After three rounds of this, the most points goes to the Winner’s Circle.  There one member of the team must list things in a category.  Each correct guess from the other team member earns money, and going all the way to the top of the Pyramid earns the game’s top prize.  In the current version, the first win of the Pyramid earns $25,000 and the second time is $50,000.

Tim Vincent was the host for one of the days of pilot shooting .  He was also the pilot host of GSN’s old game show Chain Reaction and he recently guest hosted a week of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  He’s not that bad but I’d be stunned if he went further than this.  The other host was actor Dean Cain who doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything recently.  I’ve got no personal opinion since I haven’t seen either, but Mitch said about Tim, “Did a capable job… relied on prompter a lot; chalk it up to being day one. His British accent caused a couple of pick-ups to be done, a couple in particular included when a category was Mamma Mia (he said Ma-Ma Mia, and the other with a description of a category being homophones (he would say Homo-phones and picked it up as ha-ma-phones).”

I’m pretty happy the core of the show stayed the same this time around.  The last Pyramid revival a few years back, done by Sony Pictures, had the production team do everything they humanly could to change the format in some way.  It never worked so they took it back to essentially the old format.  It’s nice to see there’s no messing around here and it goes straight for the old style.  There’s a “League of Champions” to play for the $1,000,000.  That wasn’t really touched upon.

As you can see by the set picture, they went with the old looking set updated a bit for modern times.  I’m sorry but I have to laugh a bit at some people who wet themselves over the fact they are using trilons, or those flip boxes, instead of monitors.  The trilons have to be cheaper to just slap on the one-time-only pilot than buying, mounting, and wiring about 15 monitors, which will be used for the long-run in the actual series.  It’s just simple economics and budgeting, as well as the pilot process.  Just another case of, “It’s 2009, welcome to new technology!”  Just expect the current trilons on the set to convert to monitors by the time the series pulls around.  Go cheap for now and plan for the long-run later.

Everything seems fantastic about this.  From what I’m hearing from insiders, I wouldn’t be shocked to see The $1,000,000 Pyramid be picked up for a daytime run, but stay tuned to news.  The show would have to debut in a few months when CBS’s Guiding Light burns out, so the Pyramid may be back on television once again very shortly.

GSN won’t be airing their Big Saturday Night on Saturday, July 4th.  A rerun of 2oQ will air at 8:00PM ET, a rerun of The Money List at 9:00PM ET, and Deal or No Deal at 10:00PM ET.

It’s been a recurring trend for the past couple years that if I take a vacation some big story takes place or there’s a major fan meltdown of massive proportions which ranges from catastrophic to unbelievably amusing.  Coincidentally, all of the above happened while I was away.  Major thanks to Nick who posted updates about The Price is Right host Drew Carey’s new Twitter and blog which is a great fan resource.  I love when hosts get involved like this.  Not to mention the fact that Twitter’s a great marketing tool for spreading news quickly and easily.  Then I look in my inbox at all of the freaked out people about set changes.  It goes back to my “amusing meltdown” item at the top.

I see that the set is getting a technology overhaul and adding monitors in where the old lightbulb style displays used to be.  Interestingly they are keeping the same classic look and feel, but just using monitors instead of the crusty old devices.  Good move by them.  I’m always up for updating.  But then we get into the people emailing me in a tizzy about losing the “charm” of the old version by having monitors.  Even though the monitors do the same exact thing and essentially look the same as the old displays.  It goes back to my whole argument that I always have of, “If you have new updated technology which works better than the old version both financially and from a production standpoint, why not use it?”  Especially if this new technology does the exact same thing as the old one.  I don’t know if it’s because people are so set in their ways or if it’s the golden fanboy rule of, “(Insert favorite item here) has to stay the same way from when I first loved it or it sucks.”  Or it may be something else.  I never know.  But I don’t see how any of the new monitors or displays or doors can be a bad thing.  It opens the stage up and allows for some fantastic camera work and unique directing, and as far as I’ve read I haven’t seen a single detractor of the new Price director R. Brian Dipirro.

But that’s small potatoes.  Then we get to my favorite.  I read Drew Carey’s blog and again it’s a great tool for fans to get an inside look.  The Price is Right seems pretty secretive these days so any look inside is fantastic.  And then, of course, people have to take a dump on it by being unbelievably rude or offensive in comments (thanks to people who copied and pasted them for me).  I could prattle on about it but Drew summed it up far better than I could conceivably.  Here’s the entire paragraph.

What bugs me the most is that it was all spill-over from a TPIR “fan” site that seems, at first glance, to be chock full of people that are metaphorically out on the street with their pants down yelling at a telephone pole. It’s not, totally. But like it always happens, a few people start screaming at telephone poles and next thing you know you can’t hear yourself talk. And a couple of them were treating my blog like it was nothing more than another thread on their message board, and then the one guy went over what, over there probably isn’t even a line, but over here is. I’m trying to have fun here and let fans in on what’s happening on the show, okay? Not moderate your arguments. Seriously. You can hate what I do, hate the show, whatever. But let’s be civil and have a reasoned discussion. I won’t tolerate people pooping in my pool while I’m trying to splash around with my friends and get some sun.

Again, he said it better than I could do.  Of the few shows I watched this season I will be glad to admit the beginning of the season was a bit rough, but they were trying new things.  You never know what works and what doesn’t if you don’t try stuff.  Some things didn’t work (some things bombed to a massive ugly proportion) and they essentially went back to what does.  You can’t ask for them to do much more than that.  I really just think there is a semi-large group of people who have a major issue with anyone but Bob Barker or an exact replica hosting the show.  If you follow game show news at all you know the fan site is Golden-Road.net.  What I essentially read each time I browse there is, “Bob Barker wouldn’t have done this,” or, “Roger Dobkowitz (former producer) wouldn’t have done this.”  I respect that people cling to the past and really treasure the old shows, but it’s time to move on a small amount.  It’s not the same show.  It’s not The Bob Barker Show, plus pricing boxes of rice, anymore.  I’m not saying abandon everything you once knew.  I’m saying if you dig your feet as far into the dirt as you are, your feet are going to be ripped off because the show’s moving forward whether you like it or not.  It’s not massive change.  It’s just being updated for the modern times, which it sorely needs.

And all of this goes back to my article I wrote a while ago about why I think The Price is Right is doomed.  I almost want to correct this and say why it was doomed, because Drew laid out a very specific and fantastic line in the sand recently that was needed.  It was a line that a good deal of people have been saying for a long time.   But if nothing else, I’m seeing The Price is Right being linked to in news sites and blog sites for the first time in eons because of Drew’s blog and Twittering.  Any press is good press, and Drew as well as the rest of the staff is getting the word out.  The set pictures Nick posted look like the crew is updating the show respectfully, in a modern-retro way.  Drew’s blog posts are incredibly entertaining.  It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of The Price is Right, but all of the updates are actually making me want to actively watch the new season.  I’ve been a supporter of Drew Carey since day one and I still enjoy him on the show immensely.  It’s been long overdue that we welcome the show into the 21st century.  It’s also nice to see people actually talking about The Price is Right for what the show actually is and what’s happening to it for a change instead of nerdy things like the lineups.

Drew Carey joined the blogosphere this weekend, with a new blog and Twitter account.  Between the two, we’ve gotten word of some very “big” changes to Price for the upcoming 38th season.  First off, the season premiere (EDIT: this episode will air on September 21) will feature former Drew Carey Show colleague Craig Ferguson, now the host of the Late Late Show.  Also, there are some major and minor upgrades to the set.  First, the one bid displays are going “unpasteled,” and getting LED lights inside of them.  The lights on the edge of the stage for Drew’s recent Million Dollar Spectaculars are present for the premiere, but as of right now are not known to be permanent for the season (but my guess is they are).  But the most obvious change will be the addition of what looks like a video wall (called “Door 5″, to join the 3 doors and the plasma screen in the back) stage right of the turntable, where the producers’ box used to be.  Check out the pictures below to see these changes in action.

EDIT 6/23/09: Okay, it’s not actually a video wall, but each of the brand-new showcase podiums seem to have an LCD screen inside…

Edit: I said 10AM, for some reason. I meant 12:00AM.  Sorry.  This is why I need a vacation.  I’m burned out.

I’m on vacation for the next week and staying far away from a computer for the most part.  I wrote this on my iPhone so I’ll have to check your feelings and comments next week when I return.  However, I had to pass this along.  Big Saturday Night seems like a little bit of a bomb, doesn’t it?  I haven’t heard more than two or three people saying anything good about the BSN segments they did between shows.  Again, personally, I thought it sucked and bordered on embarrassing.  I appreciate the effort, but it failed rather spectacularly.  However, 20Q and The Money List ended up pretty good.  I honestly fear for the two shows being dragged down from stretching out to 90 minutes from the original 60 minutes in this block and just the general crappiness of it in general.  GSN’s giving you more chances to catch the shows without the BSNight stuff in there.

Starting Monday, June 29th, 20Q will air Mondays at 8:00PM ET and The Money List at 9:00PM ET.  Furthermore, starting that same week, The Money List will air Wednesdays at 8:00PM ET and Thursdays at 12:00AM ET.  20Q will air Thursdays at 9:00PM ET and Wednesdays at 12:00AM ET.  So the good news is that I can’t encourage you all enough to watch the shows in their usual hour long format instead of whatever form it’s in now.  The bad news is that the schedule’s a bit of a mess now.  Scratch that.  It’s all over the board.

I’ve said this from the start: I thought the GSN rebranding a few years back did a few good things.  The one thing I wish they would just bring back is every night, from 10:00PM ET to midnight, is a different block of shows.  It added variety, allowed them to play once-a-week hour-long game shows without screwing up the schedule, and it added something new.  I really have no idea what’s going on with this at all.  We’ll see how the ratings go for it.  I heard the ratings for the entire BSNight block were not that good.  They ranged in the Game Show Awards level of around 450K viewers.  For the amount of advertising and promotion that thing got, not to mention the ungodly money they give away to audience members, that’s not that good.  If they want to figure out why the ratings for it aren’t good I think there are dozens of places discussing why it sucked.  It’s essentially the same reasons people gave for the awards show not working to its fullest.

Seriously, how many times can a show be sued? This time, Michael Lerner, a former contestant, is suing the show because he fell down and hurt his ankle. This same thing has happened plenty of times before, all without incident. What makes a guy with a Barker-sized ego want to sue?

Oh wait, I think I answered my own question.