A lack of news plus a lack of any time to update anything leads to nothing done around here. But hey, here’s a video of the Australian version of Power of 10 which was sadly canceled after just two episodes because of bad ratings. Check out their version.
10
Apr
08
Posts
I found it somewhat interesting that while the show was obviously geared toward Australians (”What percantage of Australians…” and so forth), in the opening seconds of the video they had all the continents behind the logo rather than just Australia (look close at around 0:05 and you can see Alaska in the top left portion as well as Aussieland in the bottom right).
I don’t know why this show was taken off the air–in Australia or the US. I for one love watching the answer circle going up and down and the people answering these questions. Not much stalling but still big money. I will miss it.
I’ll miss Po10 too. KBGUY09: I believe Alex posted a bit of information on why it was cancelled back in January here. I’m pulling for the summer revival, it’d be nice to see.
I love looking at other countries’ versions of shows and seeing how things work out for them in comparison to us… Like I love how we got a good amount of Po10 and they nixed after two episodes, and they have “The Rich List” which we nixed after only one airing…
I think the problem h with the aussie version is that the first question too way too long to get through especially since it was only for $100. and somehow having a $1m prize seems to lessen the excitement for me, even if the prize was $5 million or 2.5 million it would have been more exciting. and if the show had been popular enough it would have been interesting i think, to one day do an international show, with champs from all over the world and do global polls. I can picture some questions now, “what percentage of the world’s inhabitants are against the US invasion of Iraq”, “what percentage of the world’s inahbitants consider themselves overweight?” you might have an inkling on how your country would vote but having to estimate the entire world’s opinion would make for an interesting challenge.
This was CHEAP, even in Aussie standards… Remember deal loving $2m there, Price is Right doing over $600k normal showcases, and then play forever to win $100 :( We had one or two at most $1m winners on our prize #s, so even though it was channel 9, they could still of done something on the exact lines etc.
Don’t think the host helped - his delivery was horrifically wooden.
Marc: That’d be totally awesome to see. It’d be like if a Gallup pollster went to the Olympics… But the problem with that is that it’d be hard to really find an “accurate” “average” of the “world.” How does one divvy up the voting? Since it’d be impossible to poll every person on the face of the earth, who decides who gets polled? Do certain countries get more votes because of population (China) or size of country (Russia) or population density (after a quick Wikipedia search, Macau)? Will the “smaller” or “third-world” countries be included in the polls? How does one ensure that the poll questions translate properly into other languages, without the meaning of the question being marred? By all means, I’d love to see an International Po10, or even some sort of International Gallup for that matter, but there are so many barring factors keeping it from working. If you ever get it to work, give me a call, I’d love to be a contestant, or even just an audience member!
Now, I have worked a little on our version of “Power of 10″ last year as a rehearsal contestant, and I am a huge supporter and fan for the show. I do think having polls across the entire globe may be more interesting, but I guess people have better understanding of their own country. The polling process for the questions is the biggest factor. Like some of you said, you can’t sample every single person in a country. That’s why when you sample a select few, and use the Normal Distribution theory and other statistical information to finds sample means and standard deviations of the polls, that can make the results more accurate.
I’ll say this–that the game is find the way it is, but the show was built around the $10,000,000 jackpot. Even a jackpot of $5,000,000 would be nice. As for the Aussie version, it would take 5-10 minutes to get through the preliminaries, just to play for only $100. Also, the last question in their version had you to make an EXACT GUESS on a new question. That’s right, between 0%-100%, lock in only one number, and hope you get it right!
So Statistically, you have only a 1% chance of winning the $1,000,000 jackpot on the Aussie Verison. In the US version, you have a 9% chance of winning the $10,000,000 jackpot (1 out of 11), with a 10% of winning the $1,000,000 on the US version because of the 10 point range. So in the end, the $1,000,000 wasn’t just too small for the show’s reputation, but it was nearly impossible to win!
yikes…. no winners :(
a 1% chance of winning that’s horrible, no one’s ever going to take that gamble.
and Steve I think I may have figured out a system I’m actually down to 3: for international Power of 10, either have 10 contestants (each from a different country) poll 1000 people in each represented country or do the show live aired all over the world and with each question, the home audience is asked to vote in either by text messaging, email or call a 1-800 number, and you can offer voters entries into drawings for cash and prizes. or they could ask question like: “What percentage of Canadians know all 50 U.S. state capitals” and then the question could be something like “What percentage of French smoke?” more or less just pseudo-randomly change the country from question to question but like my first format only the countries represented by contestants would actually be polled.
1/100 chance at the top prize…….that’s insane! Ugh.
Anyway, an international Power of 10 would work great, whether you have it here in the U.S., or elsewhere, you can add a true worldwide dynamic to the game, and make it even better than it is. Just keep the same rules, of course.
I think the biggest problem that I see with the Po10 is that it seems that the contestants are not really playing the game, they’re looking to their brain-dead supporters to answer for them…and of course questions drag on too long. I still feel if the US version came back (come on Global, a Canadian version? Hint, hint) they should do us all a huge favor and get rid of that awful endgame for $10 mil. Who in their right minds could risk $900,000 on that?! My idea is:
1st question ($1,000): 50% range - easy enough right?
2nd question ($10,000): 40% range - now it’s getting harder
3rd question ($100,000): 30% range
4th question ($1,000,000): 20% range
5th question ($10,000,000 - The Big One): 10% range and make it a really interesting question, something totally out of left field
Some other things I would like to see that might help the show is to have the audience not shout out higher/lower when the contestant is making their first guess. Remember, they are not being asked to lock in their answer yet. Let the contestant answer for themselves or instead of supporters, make it a 2 person game. Lose the preliminary round and maybe do a Millionaire-esque style toss-up question with 10 people with the closest to the correct answer playing for the big money and maybe adding another person to the ring. Keep the game flowing and lose once and for all (3 years is getting to be too much for this) these stupid cliffhanger “throw it to commercial just to piss off the viewers and watch your rating go down” moments. And for once, could we please stop craming 1 game into an hour? It is more fun watching paint dry on nights like these no matter what show it is. And could we please tell Drew Carey that we know who he is! He doesn’t have to say that he’s Drew Carey after every commercial break. Yesh!
Those are my opinions. You may agree or disagree but that’s why we have these blogs. Out.