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

Minute to Win It began in March 2010 and has evolved greatly over its short history.  Regular viewers like you never saw the original version of the show including extra models, smoke machines, slow motion replays, and more.  They completely edited these things out before the series started, and it made the show far more enjoyable than it would have been.  After the first few episodes the show changed to a lighter tone and mainly involved couples playing for the still-unwon million dollar top prize.  The show’s never been a giant hit, but has enjoyed a loyal following.

I’ve got a lot of issues with the show, but I’m impressed it’s been on the air for this long.  Something happened with the show this year, though.  It became pretty good at the end of last year and started to become its own entity.  It had its own unique identity and was pretty fun to watch.  The show jumped jumped off the deep end the past few months, though, and never recovered.  It took Deal or No Deal two or three years to become the circus that Minute became in months.

Regardless, though, I wouldn’t have expected something like this to stay on for the length of time it did, it produced a few exciting moments, and it always does the game show genre well to have a show enjoy some popularity.  I doubt we’d be seeing the large amount of game shows this summer without it, so there’s thanks for that at least.  We’ll see if it ends up anywhere else.  ITV has their revamped version in production now so we’ll keep you posted on that.

Neither show has done that well in the ratings this season.  Fifth Grader started strong in season one, peaking near the 2.0 area, but it nosedived this season.  Actually it was almost identical to what happened with Deal or No Deal during its second syndicated season.  Most recent rating figures have Fifth Grader frozen at a 0.9 rating, roughly one full point lower than it was for many weeks last year.  It has been announced, though, that The Hub has picked up the entire run of Fifth Grader to rerun starting this year. Lyrics never set the world on fire.  The most recent rating for the Mark McGrath hosted game was a 0.7.

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader began in February 2007 on Fox as a million dollar game show.  It made the leap to syndication in Fall 2009 with a quicker, streamlined format and a $250,000 top prize.  Don’t Forget The Lyrics! aired with Fifth Grader on Fox for most of its life.  The million dollar music game debuted in July 2007 before leaving the network in 2009, taking a year off, and coming to syndication with a $50,000 top prize in 2010.

For the past few years whenever one syndicated game show left, another took its place.  We started with Deal or No Deal and got Temptation, Crosswords, and Trivial Pursuit.  It looks like no new game shows will be entering the market in Fall 2011 this time around.

Although the civillian version has been axed by the major commerical broadcaster, ITV have decided to continue with celebrity specials after their live celebrity experiment last month recorded over 6 million viewers, the biggest rating for the show for nearly five years.

The show was launched in September 1998 as a stripped series by airing every night for ten nights, resulting in the show bringing in record figures for ITV. Future stripped series was comissioned in 1999 and 2000 with the show being sold to USA, Australia and Germany in 1999. The continued popularity of the show had ITV giving show to be aired three days a week in September 2000 where it created Judith Keppel as the first £1 million winner. Due to Chris Tarrant being overworked with the show and a dip in the ratings, September 2001 had the show being reduced to two days a week with September 2002 onwards having the show airing once a week on Saturday nights. Although the show was being aired regulaly, except for transmission breaks in the summer, ratings continue to slip throughout the years. A decision was made in 2007 to apply change to the show. This included reducing the number of questions from 15 to 12, changing some of the money tree amounts, introducing nationwide auditions and moving the show to Tuesday nights. Although ratings continued to dip, 2010 saw the show receiving another revamp which included the removal of Fastest Finger First, the first seven questions were against the clock and an fourth lifeline (switch the question) being awarded if someone reaches the £50,000 milestone. The final civillian episode was shown on Tuesday 5th October 2010.

With the news of the axing, an ITV source have stated “We are looking to do fewer shows but make them higher profile. The appetite at the moment is for big specials while the audience has drifted away from the run-of-the-mill ­instalments featuring ordinary punters. It’s still a popular brand but we need to make sure it remains fresh and relevant. There’s a realisation that having ­Millionaire on every week for eight weeks perhaps isn’t the way forward any more.”

The live celebrity special (and only the second live episode to be produced) was aired before Christmas in a 9pm slot. Although it produced the biggest ratings for nearly five years, the show received criticism from viewers where the live show was being rushed towards the end of the alloted timeslot. Resulting in the celebrity pair (Coronation Street’s Mikey North and Katy Cavanagh) to play fourth being denied the chance to play but they were awarded with £1,000 for their two charities and Carol Vorderman and Gok Wan finishing at £10,000 without being the chance to continue up the money ladder.

As of today, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? remains one of the biggest UK television exports after selling the format to 106 countries, with Mexico and Afghanistan being the latest countries to air the show in 2010. With many countries tweaking the format such as the USA syndicated version using the shuffle format and Australia’s Hot Seat format. As a send off for the once popular show, here are some facts from the UK show as well as a small timeline of events. Obvivously, the timeline doesn’t feature every single detail.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Facts

• 1207 contestants have won a combined £51,562,000 in prize money.
• Including celebrity specials, 566 episodes have been aired since 4th September 1998.
• Five contestants have won the top prize of £1 million. The first in November 2000, the last in September 2006.
• Seven contestants and a married couple have walked away with nothing, all failing to answer the £1,000 guaranteed question. With one contestant walking with nothing on the live 300th episode.
• Seven people have won £500,000 but decided not to risk to win £1 million. No civillian couple has won either £1 million or £500,000.
• Two people have lost £218,000 on the show before the money tree changed in 2007.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Timeline

• 4th September 1998 – First episode was aired at 8pm on ITV. Graham Elwell became the first contestant, winning £64,000. First series was broadcast for ten consecutive days, each show running for 30 minutes.
• January 1999 – Breaks the world record for the most money given away on any game show in the world (£266,000 over three contestants). Also featured the first two people to win £125,000.
• September 1999 – First £250,000 winner on the show’s first anniversary.
• December 1999 – Behind the scenes documentary, Is That Your Final Answer was shown with three episodes being aired on Christmas Day.
• January 2000 – First £500,000 winner.
• March 2000 – Paddy Spooner became the first person to appear on two different versions of the show in the world, after appearing on the Australian version in 1999 winning $250,000. He also won £250,000 on the UK version. Also the final series to be aired daily for two weeks.
• May 2000 – First celebrity special featuring Carol Vorderman and Kirsty Young, both hosting their own Celador produced shows in the future.
• September 2000 – First series to be shown three days a week, Sunday (then changed to Saturday), Monday and Thursday evenings.
• November 2000 – Judith Keppell becomes the first £1 million winner.
• January 2001 – Introduces couples playing the format for the first time.
• April 2001 – David Edwards becomes the second £1 million winner.
• September 2001 – Reduces the show to being aired two days a week, Saturday and Tuesday.
• September 2001 – Major Charles Ingram was disqualifed with his £1 million winnings after been found cheating with Tecwin Whittock assisting with the answers via a coughing system. His appearance was edited out but shown as part of the trial outcome in April 2003. Whittock also managed to appear on the show but was left in the final edit in September 2001.
• September 2001 – Introduces celebrity couples for the first time, featuring Jonathan Ross and wife, Jane Goldman.
• September 2001 - Robert Brydges becomes the third £1 million winner.
• January 2002 – Increases the show to be aired four days a week, Saturday to Tuesday but reduces the time lengh of each episode from 60 minutes to 30.
• September 2002 – Reduces the show once again but now airing an hour every Saturday night from September to May/June.
• November 2002 – Live episode broadcasted to celebrate their 300th episode (but in reality it was the 299th).
• September 2003 – Celebrates their fifth birthday by inviting back the three £1 million winners but being paid up with a celebrity.
• April 2004 – Pat Gibson becomes the fourth £1 million winner.
• September 2006 – Ingram Wilcox becomes the fifth £1 million winner.
• August 2007 – New 12 question money tree introduced with nationwide auditions.
• August 2010 – New clock format and removal of Fastest Finger First introduced.
• 5th October 2010 – Steph Brown becomes the final contestant on the show, winning £5,000.

101 Ways received much criticism over the summer with the show having too many exits resulting the eliminated contestants being slowly lowered into a swimming pool and complaints from viewers saying the show was being dragged out too much to the sixty minute timeslot. It was proved on this website in August that the show could be done in under seventeen minutes. To remind readers, the clip at the bottom of the article was from the final show

The axing of the show will be a blow to Steve Jones as this was his first primetime show as a solo host. Although 101 Ways has been axed, the Beeb continues to have faith in the host and will no dobut be working on a new format in the near future. It was reported last week he will be leaving Channel 4′s T4 programme after seven years on air. Those who have worked on T4 in the past have had successful primetime television careers, from the likes of Ben Shephard, Vernon Kay and Dermot O’Leary.

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And to be honest, not to be rude, if you expected Pyramid to get picked up you were delusional.  When it’s against only game shows then yeah, it’s looking good.  Put it against a talk show in the format of a very popular one on ABC and it’s looking iffy.  Add the wife of the head of CBS into the mix and you’re boned.  Andy Richter fronted the latest pilot with celebrities like Betty White taking place.  Pyramid was done by Embassy Row and Sony Pictures.

At this point I really wouldn’t get your hopes up about it coming back.  It’s had a lot of chances and I just don’t see it happening right now.  There’s not a good number of outlets for it.  It’s a shame but there we go.  We do have a new season of the incredibly fun Let’s Make A Deal to look forward to.  I mean obviously it could have a remote shot on cable or something and Sony is obviously still interested but given the history the past two years with the show, I’m just not expecting anything.

The outcry for the death of 1 VS 100 has been very visible, too.  Check out any tech blog and you’ll see an overwhelming if not unanimous declaration of sadness to see the show go away.  It was very popular and done unbelievably well.  It opened the door for a lot of social game show programming.  I doubt we would have seen stuff like the Family Feud Facebook game without it.  Good luck to the team.  Can’t wait to see what else they come up with.

I really hope this vocal cry of support and love of the game and the show itself can convince That Certain Network that this is a show that needs picked up and put on.  Good shows don’t stay away that long, as was evident by 1 VS 100 living this long in some way, shape, or form.  Someone at the network should really look at how the unanimous reaction to the show coming back all over, not just from here or game show websites, has been, “Yes, please.”  No quiz show in recent time has had this much support, and it can be a massive player and a long-awaited hit.

The situation on Fox’s now-canceled quiz show Our Little Genius is pretty bad.  It would have been larger news if the NBC late night ordeal wasn’t happening at the same time.  To bring people up to speed if you are behind: Fox pulled Our Little Genius less than a week before its debut because there was an, “issue with how some information was relayed to contestants during…pre-production,” according to executive producer Mark Burnett.  Some audience reports from Hollywood Junket are shedding some more light on this.

We briefly discussed this first issue.  The child contestants were guaranteed $10,000.  It takes three questions to reach the $10,000 milestone.  If a kid doesn’t reach that point and loses earlier, they stopped tape and brought back the contestant to restart the game.  It’s a bit shady and dumb, but so many shows have done it that I’m not calling shenanigans on this part.  Million Dollar Password had a similar rule originally where contestants would get two shots going for the first milestone of $25,000.  A lot of shows pick and choose the episodes to air and shelve others because they are deemed not exciting, so stuff like this happens.  It sucks and it shouldn’t, but it does.

This one is, again, a report HollywoodJunket.com.  The category of a question is given to the kid before the decision to stop with the money or play the question is stated by the parents.  In one game attended by the entertainment website, the category was given and the kid said he didn’t know it. At this point taping was stopped for a few minutes.  After this, the game began again and a new category was given.  The kid knew this category well and the game proceeded.  Someone from the show afterwards, to brush the situation off, said it was a “technical error” and the categories were “mixed up by mistake”.

So we’ve got this and we’ve got the alleged preproduction issues reported by the New York Times where information about the topics in the game were given out to the contestants in some way, and the two probably sync up somewhere along the line.  If all this alleged information true it’s just about as bad as you can get without giving the kids the answers on a piece of paper beforehand.  I’ll repeat again: it’s not that hard to make a game show.  Mark Burnett is a fantastic reality producer; one of the best.  But we’re trying to shove the reality-mentality of the picture perfect show where every moment is produced to the point of being scripted.  It can’t happen.  More information will be coming in during the next few days, so stay posted.

So it seems information about questions or the topics were exposed in some way, shape, or form.  There’s no other information that can be given out that would cause the show to be pulled beyond information specific to the material or topic of the questions.  It leaked out somehow.  Maybe someone got ahold of it through other means.  Maybe during contestant briefings too much was given away.  There’s no full explanation yet so we can’t comment on this.  Great job not picking up The Cube and taking this instead, Fox!  Here’s a statement by executive producer Mark Burnett:

“I recently discovered that there was an issue with how some information was relayed to contestants during the pre-production of ‘Our Little Genius.’ As a result, I am not comfortable delivering the episodes without re-shooting them. I believe my series must always be beyond reproach, so I have requested that Fox not air these episodes.”

And if I had to take a guess I’d say this actually means the lawyers got on their asses and did this.  I could be wrong as always, but it makes more sense than sitting on this information for weeks before suddenly saying, “You know what, let’s pull the plug,” a few days before debut.

This has been a major issue with game shows this decade and it finally came to its breaking point now.  The amount of production done to these shows to turn them into the absolute perfect product teeters on sickening and they went too far.  What we were given by most production companies in this primetime era were semi-scripted dramas, not game shows.  I mean nothing will change because of this.  The show still may air.  This sort of stuff is just annoying.  Why do so few producers understand this genre?  It’s not hard to get.  Mark Burnett is clearly a fantastic reality producer.  He’s given us some of the best in the genre and I enjoy his Shark Tank especially.  But this isn’t a reality show.  Game shows are treated differently.  You let the show happen.  When you produce everything to a point of being anal, what do you get?  You get Our Little Genius, and you get a lot of wasted money on a show that won’t air.

Thanks to Michael Hetrick for the link to the original New York Times story on this.

Edit: I removed a few things that weren’t needed in the original dialog and cleaned it up a bit.

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?: If you’re looking for the primetime million dollar version, I wouldn’t count on it.  It’s basically canceled at this point.  However, the daytime version is taping and looking for audiences by clicking here.  The format for the daytime edition is far better, using a new bank-building game play with the chance to multiply your money by ten in the final bonus question.  Up to $250,000 can be won.  I wasn’t a fan of the primetime version, but this new edition looks interested and I’ll be sure to watch.

Catch 21: Nothing is set in stone yet, obviously, as the second season just ended.  However, the ratings for this new season were at the top of Game Show Network’s list each week.  The show also wound up being pretty under budget which is why you saw some of the $50,000 episodes.  Of course I can’t guarantee a third GSN season but as of this morning when I last heard from sources, I wouldn’t be remotely shocked to see it pop back up.  I’m hoping, too.  I enjoy it.  The production this season was by far better but for the love of whatever you believe in please get better, less annoying contestants.  The amount of people who don’t know how to add 13 and 8 was staggering.

Deal or No Deal: Let’s just get this settled; the primetime version is canceled for now.  I wouldn’t be completely shocked to see it spring up somewhere along the road but for now no more million dollar episodes.  The half million dollar daytime version begins taping in its new location of Connecticut soon, though.  People in that area wishing to sit in the audience can click here.  It’s going to be interesting to see what they do this season.  I’m really curious if they shipped that huge set across the country or if they’re getting a new-ish look.

Don’t Forget the Lyrics: Simply put, don’t be expecting this back.

Family Feud: As we’ve said repeatedly, Family Feud is returning for a record 11th season, making it the longest lasting version of the show ever.  Lots of changes are coming this season, including a new Bullseye round making the end game worth a potential $30,000.  Also, any family that wins five days wins a car.  It’s extremely exciting and we’ll have more on that later.  If you want to be in the audience, visit the ticketing website here. Go to the Feud website to see how you can be a contestant.

Jeopardy!: It’s no shock to anyone that Jeopardy! will be returning in the Fall.  Airing now is the special Kid’s Week episodes so if you suck at the regular show and want to feel like a genius, you’re in luck!  You can always find out more about casting and audiences at their website.

Newlywed Game: GSN’s first season of the revival of Newlywed Game edited a few weeks ago.  I enjoyed it and apparently quite a few others did as well.  It rated pretty highly and had one of the highest opening weeks of any GSN show in quite some time.  As with Catch 21 I’m hearing very positive things about a second season, so stay tuned.

The Price is Right: The 38th season of the show currently hosted by Drew Carey is still around and kicking.  Click here to get tickets and possibly be a contestant. You can also read Drew Carey’s Twitter here and see his behind-the-scenes look at the show.

Wheel of Fortune: Needless to say this will be coming back and you know to look on the show’s website for audience and contestant information.  They are airing new episodes this week so be sure to check if we get another millionaire.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Coming back as well, no surprise.  If you’ve been reading this site at all you’re well aware that ABC is currently looking for contestants for its tenth anniversary edition airing in August.  The ABC version will be the same thing as the current daytime version, including the clock, new lifelines, and dollar values.  The Regis Philbin edition tapes in a few weeks and you can pick up tickets here.  The Meredith Vieira edition has a funky schedule, but you can sit in the audience for that one here. I had a blast when I went last time and if you’re in the New York City area, definitely think about it.

If I missed any show just comment it and I’ll tell you what I’m hearing about it.

Deal or No Deal should be no shock.   The ratings for the three week trial the past few Mondays have been beyond terrible.  They’ve been pretty bad all season.  Originally I placed blame on the fact that this season NBC decided to remove it from its normal Monday slot and put it on Friday.  It went back to Monday and has done horrible.  Far worse than ever before.  To me it was just a giant mix of NBC abusing the hell out of it and the constant gimmicks.  We’re finally getting back to normal, regular shows but it’s too late.  The damage was done.  The good news is that the daytime version of Deal will be back September 2009, and it’s far better than the NBC version ever was.  Moving to Connecticut to save budget may be a great thing for it, as if it can keep at its current rating level we may see it for a while.  So at least something good came of NBC’s god awful primetime version: we got the good daytime version.

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader and Don’t Forget the Lyrics never really did much for me.  They were both essentially Millionaire ripoffs (Millionaire for Dumbasses and Music Millionaire, respectively) that didn’t try to change it up a bit (1 VS 100).  But fans of Fifth Grader will be happy to know the show will be on in the daytime for a syndicated run starting September 2009.  We’ll see how long it can last there.  Even beyond my bias against the show I really don’t think that long since Millionaire is already running, but I could be wrong; it’s not that rare.  Don’t Forget the Lyrics just seems to be gone for good and not showing up anywhere again.  Scheduling abuse doesn’t seem to be the issue for those two.  They weren’t plastered everywhere.  Moving the shows from their successful Thursday time slots to a Friday one was an awful move, but FOX doesn’t seem to be hurting or missing them at all.  People just seemed to get tired of the formats after a bit, too.

That’s really the basic principle, to me, of why all these primetime game shows go.  People are getting tired of the formats and you move on.  The issue is the production companies and networks tweak the formats like crazy and change it to bring those people back, but they don’t come back and you lose what loyal viewers you had in the first place.  We saw that with primetime Deal and we see in daytime Deal how sticking with something that works keeps your loyal viewers.  I’m sure more primetime games will come soon.  To look at it positively as well, this new run of primetime game shows brought in some new syndicated game shows; something that hasn’t happened in a long long time.  This stuff is always in a cycle.  Wait a few years.  We’ll get another big quiz format and they’ll all explode again.  We’ve already taken shows from the British and the Dutch.  Let’s wait see who’s next.

But nonetheless, Hole in the Wall is gone yet again after barely achieving three million viewers.  That’s about as bad as you can get for them.  It looks like it’s going to be gone for good as well; its replacement is Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? which is starting to wear thin as well.  But again, I have to be honest, did anyone actually think the show would succeed?  If they thought they could captivate the nation for an hour each week with this unbelievably repetitive, over dramatic, and just bad idea for a stand alone show, there’s something wrong.  For the readers, was there some redeeming quality about the show that I missed?  Because I tried to watch an episode but I couldn’t.  I got more enjoyment out of watching YouTube clips of the US version online, which is where the show deserves to stay.  Anyone going to miss the show, honestly?

This has been the slowest week for news in a very long time.  However, we do have some Only Connect coming up later tonight.

And yes, some of it does come because of cutting costs.  Some also is dealing with going back to the roots of the network which were, in all honesty, much more successful in a ratings stance.  Whammy five years ago wasn’t going to get renewed because of a 0.4 rating.  Now that’s the network’s most popular show.  While the rebranding of Game Show Network to GSN was successful in the beginning, it quickly subsided, and getting back to the routes of producing some young, fresh, interesting, and hip game shows like they used to do in 2002 might be what’s needed.

Dear PlayManiacs,

We have greatly appreciated your support of our PlayMania efforts over the last 19 months; it’s been an amazing experience and we’re glad to see that you’ve enjoyed playing along. It goes without saying that we’ve learned much from your feedback (so keep it coming) and while it’s true that quiznation’s last night will be October 31, we have even bigger and better participation opportunities in store for you all in the coming months. As soon as we’ve set all the details, you’ll be the first to know. We’d say more, but we don’t want to spoil the surprises.

Sincerely,

Your Friends at GSN

Replacing the two hour block is another two hour block of…you guessed it! Reruns! At 12am we get some fun Who Wants to Be a Millionaire which I’m sure everyone is excited for. But then the actual good news starts as for 5 days a week, 1am to 2am consists of Trivia Trap and Now You See It. This may be a good step in the right direction for GSN. But it’s probably just some filler until they find something better to fill it with.