It’s upfront week and not a lot of game show news has been going around. We’ve really been over-saturated in primetime and it’s time for a short break, which is good because if we keep getting shows like Set For Life, I give up. Anyway, FOX announced their schedule and all three of their game shows survive into the Fall 2008 schedule. They’ve really benefited from using safe formats with relatively interesting concepts that generates a lot of water cooler talk.
First off, if you’re used to watching Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? and Don’t Forget the Lyrics! on Thursdays, get ready to make a change. The night of punctuation moves to Fridays, with Fifth Grader? at 8:00PM ET and Lyrics! at 9:00PM ET. I still can’t stand Fifth Grader; I just don’t think it’s a good million dollar format. When the cheaper daytime version comes in 2009, then we’ll talk. However, I watched Lyrics! a few weeks ago and I have to admit it’s not really that bad. Sure the format is unoriginal and I really don’t like any of the music (I’m a 80s and early 90s alt/grunge person), but it’s a relatively enjoyable fun hour.
My personal favorite of the group, The Moment of Truth will be placed in the Thursday at 8:00PM ET slot. This show generates the most talk and has the biggest chance of combating any of the networks. Look at the Laura Cleri episode to just realize the amount of talk the show generates. The show consistently gets ratings and is a pretty fun way to spend an hour. It’s far from a classy show, but it does something that Amne$ia never did and why shows like ABC’s Opportunity Knocks will fail: even if you can’t really play along it makes you show real human emotion. You want the contestants to win money because they’ve done good things. You want them to fail because they are asses. It makes you voice speak up.
As far as NBC goes, it’s still just Deal or No Deal with 1 VS 100 not looking good to come back. CBS has no traditional game shows but will always have its cash cow Survivor. A CBS representative told us that they have six episodes of Do You Trust Me?, a retooling of Friend or Foe? from GSN, but aren’t placing it on any upcoming schedule. ABC just has the aforementioned Opportunity Knocks which I can just sense the failure slowly creeping off of. On the cable front, like we said we have MTV’s The Phone upcoming, and GSN has three shows. One is Catch-21, which we’ve described in excruciating detail. They also have two more revivals coming out soon.
Has anyone else been extremely disappointed with this year’s syndicated offerings? They are both severely lacking, especially Temptation, and if we see any last a season, let alone past January, I’ll be amazed. Luckily next season we might have a very interesting syndication front. Three popular game shows are being worked out for syndication, one already cleared in 50% of the country. The shows: Deal or No Deal, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?, and Power of 10.
When Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader first came out, I slammed it a Millionaire ripoff for dumbasses. Harper Collins Publishing recently supplied me with an advanced copy of the new Fifth Grader book, and maybe I need to take another look at the show. Even if you’re not a fan of the hit FOX game this book may be worth a look. It’s essentially like the show except you don’t have child actors breathing down your neck or lifeli…. er, hel…. er, Cheats. You get ten questions from first to fifth grade each with a new category. After that you get the million dollar question which seems to be a bit tougher than the rest.
In the week of absolutely no game show news, we finally found some! Thanks to reader Mark O. who sent us a story from the Winnipeg Sun that one of the funniest people on the planet, Colin Mochrie, will be the host of the five episode Canadian Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? run. “We’re delighted to have Colin on board,” said Barbara Williams, senior vice president of programming and production for CanWest MediaWorks in a statement. “His unrivalled wit and ability to engage and entertain audiences will be front and centre, and we look forward to all of the fun.” Episodes are being taped in Toronto this Fall and will air on Global.
Posts
