A press release for the second season of GSN’s Bingo America came out tonight. I have to be honest, even though I do like some of the changes, portions of it leave me confused. We’ll get to that in a minute. First off, reitterating what we said before, Richard Karn is the new host. I still think he’ll do fine with the show and be a hell of a lot more entertaining and livelier than former host Patrick Duffy ever was.
We have a new end game which is slightly better too. It’s not made specifically clear, but it seems you have the same bonus board as before, as pictured to the left. Each row is hiding some “wrecking balls” behind numbers, and each row has more than the last. All totaled up, there are 20 up there. You pick a number, and if you avoid the wrecking ball you can take your money and go home or play the next level. If you hit a wrecking ball at any time you lose everything earned up to that point, but if you can make it through all the letters, you win $100,000. For home players, if the studio numbers picked match your home numbers, you are a winner as well. It’s still not the best thing on earth, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the dumb matching game. I have to give them some credit for improving there.
The rest is staying the same it seems, so no major changes beyond an added audience game. Here’s what really confuses me though. It’s debuting Monday, October 6th, at 6:30PM ET. Really, 6:30PM ET? You couldn’t have pushed Whammy, which airs at 7:00PM ET, back a half hour and put your headlining original at a decent time slot? Unless 6:30PM ET is some magic slot that gets great ratings that we don’t know about. That time slot just spells trouble to me. Especially for this season, for which 65 episodes were ordered unlike GSN’s recent normal order of 40. It’ll repeat weekends at 4:00PM ET, which replaces something that I have no idea about since schedules haven’t been sent out in eons.
10 Responses
The new bonus game seems very similar to another bonus game from Basic Game’s “Net Poker” The rules are almost identical.
There are 4 rows of six numbers. The first row contains one outlaw, the second two, the third three and the forth four. (You can play that game at http://www.folff.com/BASICGames/index.html)
I completely agree that this new bonus game is better than the other one. The whole thing seemed sketchy since they never revealed the entire board when it was complete.
Posted on August 25th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I agree – better end game. And here’s my problem with putting it at 7e: many places have Jeopady and Wheel in prime access. I think the reasoning is that people who typically watch gameshows are going to watch J and WoF, not BA, if they’re up against each other.
Posted on August 25th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Pattern is probably B=2, I=3, N=4, G=5, and O=6 wb’s (wrecking balls). What’s the object; hit one (or two, or even three) on each level?
Posted on August 25th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Any word on how much a contestant gets for geting past each tier?
Posted on August 25th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
The endgame is a bit odd and I was a little confused as well, not so much by the Wrecking Balls, but by how it all plays out. But I think it’s actually airing at 7:30 eastern – the press release quotes times in central for some reason. ;-)
Posted on August 26th, 2008 at 1:13 am
I completely understand this endgame. I can’t wait to see how this turns out. To me it seems like GSN is gambling a lot of money on a more simpler concept but we all know it WON’T be easy. Also if you’re wondering what Bingo America 2 will be replacing at 4 pm, it seems to be Russian Roulette.
Posted on August 26th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Hey, Carrie! I just got done talking to the PR company, and it is indeed 6:30PM Eastern. Weird time, isn’t it?
Posted on August 26th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I like the sound of the new bonus game, but after the game is over, for the sake of integrity, the host needs to say, “Let’s open up the board and show where everything was,” win or lose. Show the wrecking balls and where all the big prizes were. This is one thing Bingo America 1.0 didn’t do and I always wondered how close players were to picking the big 100K prize, as well as the distribution of the cash prizes and such.
Crystal also needs something to do during the bonus round. She just stands next to the board and claps. Couldn’t the producers have given her a numeric keypad to press to turn around the numbers the players call out or something? Granted, that may be a cheesy suggestion but her just standing there is cheesier. Right now she’s just a cheerleader.
I will kinda miss Patrick Duffy. While he wasn’t the most colorful host in the world, his relaxed, easy demeanor was a good fit for a game like Bingo America. And he was sincere. Probably my only complaint about him is that he was a bit mechanical and repetitive, and that could have been how the producers coached him. (“Repeat everything, Patrick, we’ve got little old ladies in Paducah, Kentucky watching us.”)
Posted on August 26th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Well Chas, they also got rid of Crystal. She is being replaced by Diane Mizota. She was on “Trading Spaces: Boys Vs. Girls”, “Your Place or Mine”, and the NBC Primetime show “Three Wishes”.
This was posted on HollywoodJunket.com and the GSN Boards in a press release.
Posted on August 26th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Thanks Alex – I had e-mails out to both the PR company and GSN as well for confirmation, and you’re absolutely right. Very weird time indeed, but at least it won’t conflict with Jeopardy here!
Posted on August 26th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Add A Comment