The watches turn up on eBay from time to time.

Actually, the TV station I work at (albeit a MNTV affiliate) is airing Crosswords repeats. I think it’s something of a package deal, though, as we also air another Program Partners show (Da Vinci’s Inquest). Just thought I’d chip in.

Also, I too felt the buzzer system should have been changed. It should have been more like Jeopardy. For instance:

The two players in the front both buzz in. One player gets it wrong. The buzzers should be reset so that the second player can have an opportunity to buzz in again if he/she wants to try it. And when the spoilers enter, do the same thing, have everybody buzz in, and when the players in the front have had their opportunity, repeat the procedure (buzz, buzz again if a spoiler is wrong, etc.) with the spoilers. The way it is now (or should I say was) If 4 or 5 players buzz in, they’re all screwed if they don’t know the word.

But the show came out the oven undercooked, and I think a lot of it has to do with Merv’s passing away right around the time they started taping. Would be great to see the show retooled during this “hiatus”, but I’m not holding my breath, considering the show has prolly been reruns since February or March. I’d love to see them revert to the pilot system, where the three contestants work together to build up a bank, which is then split evenly between the three. At least it would allow all three contestants to have an even slate.

I’m not a stickler over payouts, but just how high are production costs, when the average contestant doesn’t even win five figures!

It’s a shame they didn’t make it work, because the quiz elements were sometimes challenging at such as fast pace, but the problems were too much to overcome.

Ty Treadway…meet Guy Smiley. ‘Nuff said.

The spoilers element had confusing rules–of course everyone knew going in there’s a chance to steal a victory late in the game, a la a $5k final spin on Wheel or a late Daily Double on Jeopardy. But things like a wrong answer by a spoiler IF the other two have already given wrong answers suddenly puts them all back in play…very odd, and no penalty for the third one to make a mistake. Perhaps a one or two answer lockout would have been easier to follow.

Ditto the idea that if neither front row player buzzed in, a spoiler could take either podium, but if only one rang in, that person is the only one at risk.

The production was cheesy–bad canned applause, an old Wheel of Fortune cue as a theme….it just screamed amateur.

I’m wondering how many stations will just bury the replacement show they take and double up on Feud or Deal, if they were planning an hour long block.

The gameplay was unfair at best. I can’t tell you how many moments I’ve seen the leader get every question right then at the last second their podium would get captured then game over. It was very frustrating as a viewer to see that. Then the other thing I hated was if you were in 2nd place in the front row (Especially if their was a huge gape in the lead). You were pretty much screwed because no one would want to occupy your podium and pretty much the only way to get out would be to give a incorrect answer and hope one of the spoilers would get it correct so you can switch. Also this is a minor complaint but I notice on a rare occassion that there was more than one possible answer for a question which could have been corrected if they would have a made a clue more specific. Then lastly I think they could have given away little more money in the bonus round. $25,000 would have been more than sufficient.

It’s a shame becuase I had high hopes for this show and if they would have tinkered with the show a little more longer before it was released it would have been a real contender. Instead the result is a show that was really unbalanced.

I understand that NBC Universal and Sony both handle ad sales. Didn’t they get enough sales?

GSN I think is really the best option for Crosswords, it’s a fairly low budget show (which is perfect for GSN) and its ratings haven’t been huge and they wouldn’t really have that pressure on GSN, but like you said Alex, they’re probably not interested.

then again, this may be a good thing for crosswords, during the hiatus, they can tinker with the show and figure how to make it better for if and when it comes back.