22Dec2009
Ratings Report: “Family Feud” and “Millionaire” Hit Season Highs
Our genre has been doing extremely well the past few weeks in the ratings. Two shows the week ending December 13th, the two to watch the most this season in reality, hit season highs. First is Who Wants to be a Millionaire which gained a great 13% to a 2.7. It shows how much I know about predicting this stuff. I mean looking at ratings and you almost wonder why a lot of shows bother with big money Sweeps stunts, since middle of December ratings did better than that big period. Always glad to see Millionaire do well. The other nice gain was Family Feud, up 8% to a 1.4. Again, it's a season high. I blather on and on with praises on Family Feud, so I'll skip that and just say I get such a smile when I see the show do better or just a
Read MoreView Comments (3)22Dec2009
GSN Launches “Deal or No Deal” Game for Oodles
See, when GSN sticks with game show related things they can do a good job. The network has launched an online version of Deal or No Deal where you play for Oodles, their currency you can spend on things like gift cards and others. Up to 250 Oodles are up for grabs. Click here to play, it's pretty fun.
Read MoreView Comments (1)21Dec2009
Updated GSN Schedules and a Rumor About a New Show
We've just updated the GSN schedules through the end of January 2010. They've become just a tiny bit of a mess because of the inclusion of the new hidden camera show Hidden Agenda and Carnie Wilson's reality show. Well, inclusion is a bit of a nice way to describe it. It's sort of like a five year old shoving a piece into a puzzle that doesn't fit hard and they finally got it to stay in place a bit so they glued it in before anything bad happened. If you're a GSN viewer you're going to have to read the schedules daily to try to figure out what exactly will be airing since it's a fiasco. Again, Hidden Agenda will debut January 14th at 8:30PM ET and the Carnie Wilson thing at 8:00PM ET. The rerun schedules are confusing, so here they ar
Read MoreView Comments (10)21Dec2009
Weekend Replay on a Weekday: “Succes Verzekerd”
In my continued quest to show you some great (or horrible) games from abroad, I really have been looking to the Netherlands. It seems to be about the only country coming up with decent original ideas which is yet another of the dozens of reasons to love them. They've had a show going on on their network RTL recently called Succes Verzekerd. The easiest way to describe it is a single player edition of ABC's short-lived quiz show Duel on the Million Dollar Password set. One player gets seven categories and a million euro. The contestant chooses one of the categories, and the first question has three answers. The player has to place all of his or her bank on the answer he or she thinks it is and lock it in. Three times during the show
Read MoreView Comments (7)21Dec2009
Ratings Report: “Fifth Grader” Continues to Grow
Time for a ratings update from the first week of December. I wasn't a fan of the primetime edition of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader because, well, it was a complete ripoff of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but I understand why it has its fans. It's why I was a bit excited to see the current daytime edition since they have a relatively unique game now that isn't falling into the trappings of a million dollar game show, which a comedic quiz game like Fifth Grader felt bizarre under. It's why I'm actually happy to see the show continue to do really well. It grew again; up 7% to a 1.6. It's not at the levels that Deal or No Deal hit but it's far exceeding my expectations and it's against much tougher competition. I'm really rooting
Read MoreView Comments (7)19Dec2009
New Game Show Games for iPhone
Like game shows and are a big Mac snob like I am? A lot of companies have been releasing some great game show games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. We did some reviews of past ones, and it was a mixed bag. A lot of companies were just figuring out how to really utilize what tools they have at their fingertips. They've got it all figured out and I haven't seen a real dud out of the last few released. The one I urgently press you to pick up is Who Wants to be a Millionaire 2010. The new version (it's not an upgrade; you'll have to pay again) is a total redo of the past versions. Graphics have been updated hugely for the better. You still have the actual graphics from the show and all the real music like before. The view of the game
Read MoreView Comments (11)17Dec2009
Guy Fieri Hosts NBC’s “Perfect Ten”; Debut TBA
What do you get when you take England's hit semi-revolutionary game show The Cube and dumb it down for general American standards? You get NBC's new game show Perfect Ten. Before we get to this, we would like to say that Josef Adalian from TVMoJoe has confirmed what we announced a few weeks ago, that Fox has dropped The Cube. The field is wide open for someone to go after it now. American networks would frankly be stupid to not go after it. But that's old news. Onto Perfect Ten. We've got a host for the show. It's Food Network personality Guy Fieri. Hey, it's not the generic standup comic for a change. NBC has a description of the show. Adalian's post states: "Fieri will serve as master of ceremonies and will be the competitors
Read MoreView Comments (21)16Dec2009
New GSN Reality Show: “Life at Stake”; Bunco Series Greenlit
Batten down the hatches: it's another GSN reality show. This one is called Life at Stake. It's about weight loss. I half expected it to be called Life at Steak at first, but enough horrible puns. Honestly it seems like it's just going to be a non-competition based The Biggest Loser, so it's not really a game. That "Play Every Day" motto really isn't working too well apparently. They are casting unhealthy people to come on the show. They will help them get healthy. How thrilling. If you want the appearance fee to be on the show because you're too lazy to get healthy without doing it without monetary help, click here. Odds are you're going to need to be LA based. History has repeatedly shown any attempt at reality shows on the ne
Read MoreView Comments (32)14Dec2009
Howie Mandel Casting for New Game Show “He Said She Said”
A few months back there was word that Howie Mandel was casting for a TV adaptation of the board game Battle of the Sexes. It looks like it's finally coming to fruition, apparently without the board game tie-in. The show is now called He Said She Said and it's created/executive produced by Howie and Don't Forget the Lyrics! producer Jeff Apploff. The description of the show is contestants of the opposite sex have to answer edgy polling questions and the winners get some gender specific prize, like a fishing trip for men or a spa weekend for the ladies. Pretty standard show. It's not fully known if this is a pilot or a series, but it's looking for contestants regardless. They are looking for obviously outgoing people, opinionated, wit
Read MoreView Comments (26)14Dec2009
Can “Pyramid” or “Press Your Luck” Work in 60 Minutes, Hypothetically?
So during the conversation of what could possibly replace CBS's canceled soap As The World Turns, and I'm pretty sure it'll end up being a game show, we were talking about shows that could replace it. I mentioned that I'm a bit shocked Fremantle hasn't gone after CBS hard for Press Your Luck given merchandise comes out for it and they've been looking for an outlet since CBS's Game Show Marathon. It's also becoming pretty clear that CBS is going to want whatever daytime (game)show that comes into the lineup to be an hour long. After that we start to get concerns of shows stretching from the original 30 minute format to 60 minutes. A lot of us had fears of Let's Make A Deal going to 60 minutes and that worked out fine. There's really o
Read MoreView Comments (146)14Dec2009
The Comedy of Debi Gutierrez, Host of GSN’s “Hidden Agenda”
We all have different ways of communicating. Long time readers known my way of communicating is sarcasm, horrible puns, and realism. Others have different, happier ways. And my sarcasm mixed with my realism makes me more than a bit nervous about how GSN's new show Hidden Agenda will work out. I'm a huge comedy nerd and I was a bit amazed that I never heard of the host of the show Debi Gutierrez. Frankly I felt a little bad about that. I had to go to her website to find out more. She's got some YouTube clips of her performing. I actually find her pretty funny unlike so many other people who I can't quite understand how they got any sort of following *coughJeffDunhamcough* *coughDaneCookcough*. Here's a small clip below so you can se
Read MoreView Comments (4)10Dec2009
GSN Renames “Honey, Please” to “Hidden Agenda”; Debuts January 14th
We've talked a bit about GSN's hidden camera show Honey, Please which was casting in the New York City area a bit ago. It's been renamed Hidden Agenda and we've got some more information. The game will debut January 14th at 8:30PM ET, replacing one of the ten million reruns of Family Feud. Comedianne Debi Gutierrez, who honestly I've never heard of in my life, is the host. She's apparently a comic who specializes in relationship humor. Hidden Agenda sees couples set each other up to do comedic (I'll be the judge of that) challenges for cash and prizes. Casting notices said the total pool of prizes is up around $12,000. A group of recurring actors will come into the mix some where and set them up to do other things as well. The sho
Read MoreView Comments (29)10Dec2009
ABC Orders Presentation for “The Six”, the Russian Import “What? Where? When”
Looks like we've got another network game show to be watchful for. Hollywood Reporter announced that ABC has ordered a presentation for a new show called The Six from Merv Griffin Entertainment. The show is an import of the Russian format What? Where? When? and is pretty different than anything we've got on television. In the Russian version, a team of six in-studio players spin a wheel and answer the question the wheel lands on. The questions are sent from viewers and the six get 60 seconds to answer it. A right answer earns them a point and a wrong answer gives the other side a point, as well as that home viewer a prize. That's really about it. Merv Griffin Entertainment and ABC are touching it up to make it a bit more primetim
Read MoreView Comments (56)09Dec2009
England’s “Accumulate!” Shows What You Can Do With a £60 Budget
There's an indie British game show called Accumulate! that I felt like I should cover and I could never get the right angle. If you're in America you most likely haven't seen it or heard it, but you should. It's an incredibly entertaining made for Reading University created by Dan Peake and Gary Male. Most noticeable is that it's incredibly entertaining for seriously a £60 budget. Deal or No Deal couldn't manage to stay very entertaining with a budget worth millions of more dollars. Instead of me blathering on about it I wanted to let the host of the show, Dan Peake, write a guest blog post about their experience doing this. It's great inspiration for those of you who want to do small game shows in your universities or anywhere else.
Read MoreView Comments (15)08Dec2009
Clarification on My Mention of “Press Your Luck”
Need to clarify this since some people took it horribly wrong. Over the years there have been talks of Press Your Luck. I don't know if there are any now or what the deal is. All I said was I'm really shocked we haven't heard if they are doing it, since it fits well.
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