Let’s start with the positives, though.  With the meteoric rise of Family Feud, Who Wants to be a Millionaire has accidentally been pushed to the side for a bit.  However, they had some great news for the week ending January 22nd.  The long running syndicated quiz show hosted by Meredith Vieira hit a new season high of 2.7.  It’s been doing very well the past few weeks and it’s good to see some numbers close to where the show used to be.  It’s been a little frozen over the past few months.  Fun fact: we’re almost approaching ten years without a $1,000,000 winner (through actual game play).  It would be really nice to even just see a million dollar question.  We haven’t had one of those in about four years.  I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the 11th season then to, you know, prove what the title of the show actually means.

Speaking of Family Feud, this past week it froze at 3.2 which, again, is unbelievably good.  Remember: next season the show will switch to HD.  Steve Harvey’s talk show is taping in Chicago so could we be seeing another location change?  The top two as always are Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! with 7.7 and 6.4, respectively.

Broadcast ratings weren’t anything to scream about, but not that terrible either.  The series finale of NBC’s Who’s Still Standing? scored a fourth place 1.7/5 in the key demographic and a fourth place viewing total of 6.48 million viewers.  An unbelievable number of things were wrong with the show so I’m frankly amazed it managed to basically stay at the same exact place week in and week out.  I appreciate the effort at trying to make a fast paced quiz show, but the Minute to Win It-ization of the format made it practically unwatchable.

In England, the viewing figures for ITV’s quiz show The Exit List are depressingly low.  Last night’s very tense episode, which saw a team bail out with £17,000 after believing they could not escape the Memory Maze with £115,000, only scored 1.8 million viewers.  This is a show that really should be far, far more popular than it is and I’m not quite sure why numbers are dipping even lower than High Stakes.  Frankly, as I’m watching, I’m not even sure why this isn’t airing on the weekends like planned.  It’s got it all and I’ve yet to see a show that didn’t feature some exciting moment.  Massive shame.

Photo courtesy Valleycrest Productions Ltd

The news isn’t good for NBC’s Who’s Still Standing? which week in and week out continues to confuse by changing the rules, starting with different segments without explanation, and just being an editing nightmare.  The newest episode this past Monday saw a third place 6.19 million viewers and a third place 1.6/4 rating in the key demographic.  It’s not looking good for its renewal.  Fear Factor keeps getting damaged by a weak lead-in with a third place 5.53 million viewers.  However, it always does well in the key demographic.  It tied for first with 2.3/5, which makes NBC happy.  NBC recently announced the show seems to be a pretty good utility player for the network in the future, so I imagine we’ll be seeing it for a bit.

For those that don’t remember the show, Russian Roulette was extremely simple.  Host (criminally underused) Mark Walberg asked a question.  The first question has one drop zone and it goes up each new question to a maximum of five out of six drop zones activated.  Four players stand on six of the zones individually.  The person in control challenges someone to answer.  If you get it right you get money, but if you get it wrong you have to pull the handle, the lights spin, and you hope your zone is not red.  If it is…

The winner plays one of the best end games ever made: the Killer Questions.  The winner has to answer a series of questions (five brain teasers in season one; ten tricky multiple choice questions in season two) in sixty seconds.  Every ten seconds a new zone opens and activates.  Give a wrong answer or run out of time and you drop.  If you get them all you get $10,000 and a chance to gamble that for $100,000 by playing one final game of Russian Roulette with the number of activated drop zones.  Take a look at what is easily the most memorable Killer Questions and flat out one of the best game show moments of the Millionaire era.

This is exactly how this type of show should be done.  The drop can’t be the reason for the show to exist.  Russian Roulette could survive without the drop and be a fun, solid game.  Stuff like Who’s Still Standing have the drop tacked on as the sole gimmick to watch.  Take it away and you have something we’ve seen over and over.  Russian Roulette is a text book example of how to make a game show people will remember.  You need a great host, a great format, a nice gimmick which doesn’t overpower the show, and a unique twist.  It doesn’t hurt to have one of the most tense and exciting end games on television, either.

It’s also what GSN should strive to do.  Russian Roulette rivals current game shows in terms of style, excitement, and game play.  They have the power to do shows like this again and they have a crew there which can do it.  GSN can afford to take risks.  Some work big (Baggage) and some don’t (Late Night Liars).  That’s how TV works.  I’d love to see them take a risk and there are affordable daily or even weekly shows like Take It or Leave It, Whammy, or The Cube which are available, doable, and somewhat different.  They can easily put together a show that blows Who’s Still Standing and You Deserve It out of the water.  They just need to look to the past and what made them ahead of the game ten years ago.

Fear Factor began its second week on the air and suffered from a poor lead-in.  It came to 6.37 million viewers but a pretty strong 2.5/6 demo rating.  It was 2nd place overall but 1st place in the key demographic.  You Deserve It is still on the air and it somehow lost more viewers in its fifth week.  ABC’s quiz show sank to a 2.1/4 rating, down 0.2 from last week.  Its key demographic rating stuck at 0.9/2.  It doesn’t stand much of a shot for renewal.

Syndication had a mixed week ending December 4th.  Wheel of Fortune shrunk to 7.5, but that’s only down 1% so no problem.  Jeopardy! managed to grow 2% to a 6.3.  Family Feud was flat at 3.1.  Who Wants to be a Millionaire trailed the pack at 2.6, which is a 4% increase.

Here’s two rounds of play, courtesy NBC.

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GSN had the same issue with Lingo and I’ll repeat it here.  When you want to show off a new, exciting show to the press, why would you not lead with your best foot forward?  Why would you send clips of two people not knowing very elementary pop culture questions?  The first guy could not get the simple concept of a month with the letter P in it, and regardless he refused to rattle off all the months.  I really hope the show perks up and gets slightly tougher and more exciting in later rounds.  This was maddening and if I have to sit through hours of people like this, I’ll switch it off.  And so will most of America.

My only other pet peeve is you can easily see the fingerprints of Minute to Win It all over Who’s Still Standing?.  It’s got the same producers, and most of the same production tactics are carried over.  I know this sounds nerdy and petty, but that’s what we’re here for.  I don’t see why these producers are so opposed to a regular, normal game show introduction and a regular, normal soundtrack.  I’m not asking for anything mind blowing.  But for some reason this crew decides every one of their shows needs some over the top, nearly parody-like music or a reconstituted pop song playing at all times.  Is it really too much to have just a normal package?  It can still be strange and different, but something resembling the genre?  Millionaire somehow managed to update their stuff to fit 2011 and be new, and be familiar.  I don’t get the thought process behind this.  Again, petty, but oh well.

Beyond that, though, it does what it sets out to do.  Again, the show is basically the Killer Questions end game of Russian Roulette stretched to an hour and it works.  It’s not the most thrilling thing ever and Russian Roulette still holds the honor of best drop-based game show, which is an increasing crowd recently, but it’s far better than most of NBC’s recent efforts and certainly a better full package than ABC’s You Deserve It.  It looks nice, plays nice, it’s got great play-along, and Ben Bailey is great as host.  I really don’t know if America will connect with it, and those game previews supplied to us doesn’t fill me with optimism, but I’m hoping it does OK.  We don’t get relatively fast paced quiz shows much anymore.

It’s not all good for game shows, though.  ABC’s charity based quiz show You Deserve It inexplicably drop again.  It sank 10% to a new low of 0.9/2 in the key demographic and a 2.3/4 overall.  It’s definitely a goner.  Viewers just aren’t connecting.  Given that this is bombing horribly and ITV’s Holding Out For a Hero did the same, can we put a nail in the coffin of charity-based quiz shows?  They aren’t working no matter if the game works or not.

Syndication perked up for nearly all for the week ending December 4th.  The stand-out as always is Family Feud which grew 19% to a 3.1.  Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! increased to 7.6 and 6.2, respectively.  Millionaire stayed steady at 2.5.  Not bad for anyone in that group.

Check them out.  Be sure to let us know what you think of the show tonight

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The regular viewer won’t spot it most likely, but of course all of us see the incredible similarity between this and GSN’s extremely before its time original Russian Roulette, which is still the best thing that network has ever done.  This is as close to a revival as we’ll get, and it’s really pretty similar to a head-to-head version of their end game, so if you’re a fan of the old show I see no reason to not be excited to see this one.  Not to mention the fact that we don’t get coherent quiz shows much anymore (we’re looking at you, You Deserve It), so this could be a nice holiday treat for game show fans.  NBC supplied us with some stills of the show.

We only left one out, which shows one of the Heroes falling which spoils that game.  Click here for that, though, if you want to be spoiled.  It’s the best picture of a drop, but it does give away a game.

What do you think?  Looking forward to the show?  I know I am.

What do you think?  Looking forward to the debut?

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A few small things.  One: I have some fears about the show.  It’s a relatively decently paced quiz show which is nice.  We don’t have anything like it on American TV right now which is nice.  But it’s not a Millionaire ripoff nor is it a Deal or No Deal ripoff.  It has its own format.  That hasn’t worked out for most game shows over the past decade or so.  Hopefully this one can change it.

Second: I’m a sucker for the drop and this is clearly as close as we’re going to come to a Russian Roulette revival, so I’m going to enjoy it.  However, they’re making their gimmick into a joke in these previews and I don’t know if that’s smart.  Without the drop it’s a fairly boring quiz show.  When you make the big interesting thing in your show into a massive joke, no one will take it seriously.  Russian Roulette managed to keep the mood somewhat light with the drop but still make it seem scary.  If it were me, that’s how I would have tried to showcase the show.

But that’s not a deal breaker in the least.  Looking forward to the show’s debut on December 19th at 8:00PM ET on NBC.

The format follows foreign versions pretty much verbatim, save for bigger money and a new look and set.  You can read about foreign versions here, from previous reports we did.

This comes as such a shock because we had multiple people confirm to us that Who’s Still Standing? was not going to air.  We also had reports of shady goings-on during taping.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  I want the show to work.  It’s not the greatest thing on earth but it’s a good, fun show.  We don’t get rapid fire quiz shows often, and I’m a sucker for the drop zone.  It’s just confusing to see this all of a sudden.  I wish it luck, though.  This December slot has a weird history.  Deal or No Deal launched around this time, but so did stuff like Million Dollar Money Drop.

It was reported earlier this year that the show was piloted for ITV and NBC in America. Although there was no sign of the show airing on US shores. ITV decided to comission an eight episode series. The original plan was to air the show on Saturday evenings as the lead in to The X Factor but a decision was made to air the show on Tuesday evenings at 8pm (formally used by Who Wants to be a Millionaire? before the move to celebrity only shows). It has been called the Tuesday Flopzone by viewers and critics because for the last two years not one regular show between 8pm and 10pm achived more than four million viewers.

High Stakes is basically numbered Russian Roulette. A contestant need to avoid a numbered trap from eight consecutive numbers (e.g. 34-40) in order to progress. If they avoid a certain number of traps then they secure money (the second video below will explain how it works). They can either take a blind guess and pick or a number and try to avoid the trap or to request a clue which will tell them the one to avoid. If a clue is used then the host (Jeremy Kyle) can also help the contestant avoid that trap. Do this twenty-one times and they win £500,000. The show is hosted by talk show host, Jeremy Kyle. He has never hosted a game show in his life and High Stakes is his debut. For those who don’t know who Jeremy is. TV critic Charlie Brooker explains on his show Screenwipe who he is and the show he presents every weekday at 9.25am.

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The clip from High Stakes we have is from the very first contestant. It also explains the rules of the game. When you watch the clip, can you work out the biggest flaw the show has got?

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I mentioned earlier the show is slotted in the infamous Tuesday Flopzone. I can reveal the premiere airing of High Stakes recorded only 2.2 million. Making it the second lowest rating for a game show on ITV in their broadcast history. Second behind uber-flop, The Marriage Ref.

What do you think after watching this final round?  Think this is something you’d like to see in America?  The more I watch, the more I think NBC was a wrong network for it.  It doesn’t really fit a primetime network show.  It almost feels too easy to win.  Audience reports offered some shady information on what was going on during taping, actually.  Not to mention there were allegedly some rather severe injuries.  I would like to see this show, though, so we’ll see what happens