Morning Buzz for May 20, 2011
Good morning, everyone. Thanks to Nick for doing the update yesterday. I’m back in town, and here’s the first updates for the day.
*Fans of the British show Only Connect are going to be very, very happy. BroadcastNow is reporting that an iPad and iPhone version of BBC 4′s hit quiz show will be released when the fifth series starts in August. Five seasons…what a great accomplishment for the smartest show on television. No word if it’ll be released in America yet, but basically all the UK game shows like The Cube with iOS games came out for this country, and it does nothing but add money to their bank account, so we’ll be crossing our fingers.
*Speaking of Only Connect, do you want to play the game’s Connecting Walls now? Some of you are aware, but there’s a website called PuzzGrid where users can submit their own Connecting Walls and let others complete them. There’s many US-centric ones any of our readers can get involved. Click here for it.
*Many game shows are looking for audience members. NBC’s upcoming summer game show It’s Worth What? is taping today at 2:00PM. Click here for those tickets. Also, The Hub’s Family Game Night and GSN’s Baggage are looking for audience members. I highly recommend Family Game Night.
*Someone sent me a link to this yesterday. NBC’s new game show Who’s Still Standing? is coming soon. It’s a quiz show where people drop through the floor after giving wrong answers. For game show fans it sounds awfully familiar. It sounds almost identical to a slightly less fun (because of the lack of randomness) version of GSN’s Russian Roulette. Someone sent me a link to an episode of the Russian version. Check it out. Very cool. There’s lots of other episodes on the sidebar.
*Here’s today’s game show schedule:
ABC: Shark Tank at 8:00PM ET
GSN: Catch 21 at 5:00PM ET; The Newlywed Game at 6:30PM ET; Love Triangle at 7:00PM ET; Improv-A-Ganza at 8:00PM ET
I haven’t been to PuzzGrid in a while, but it’s great fun, and there’s a nice little community! Some puzzles are easy, but some are quite devilish. What’s great is that submitters select their nationality, so you can tell what sort of references (pop culture, turns of phrases, etc.) you can expect.
The only thing I don’t like about PuzzGrid is that it can be ENTIRELY too picky about your answers when the time comes to identify the categories. Answers that would be perfectly acceptable with a human host and/or judge can and frequently are ruled incorrect by this game’s parser, and there’s no discernible pattern as far as I can tell. For example: In one puzzle (I won’t say which one for spoiler purposes) my answer of “game shows” was ruled incorrect, apparently because I didn’t specify “US” or “American.” However, in another puzzle my given response of “networks” *was* taken, despite the fact the actual answer ALSO (seemingly) required me to specify a nationality for those networks!
I know that OC has a reputation of being a very cerebral, casual-thinkers-need-not-apply game, but this sort of thing makes it needlessly *more* difficult. Other than that, however… highly recommneded! It’s a fiendishly deceptive time-waster.
Devin,
That’s a fair bone, I think. But since your scores aren’t saved anywhere and you can see the ‘right’ answer after the fact, I think it’s fair to award yourself the point.
When you submit a game, you can control how specific you want the answerer to be and give a host of options. So, if a set is [Ravens Titans Giants Cowboys], the answer might display as “NFL Teams.” The creator can make it so it just accepts “NFL” or “football” (and anything with one of those strings).
I miss Russian Roulette. I’d say I’d like GSN to bring it back, but after hearing what they’ve done with Lingo I’m scared to.
I actually really like the Russian aesthetics and music. If it was brought back, I wouldn’t mind those with the American rules.
I don’t get, though, why they don’t continue to show the flashing drop zone lights after the lever is released. That just seems silly.
The new schedule is a little different than what I thought it would be. At least they cut down one episode of Lingo during the day. That’s smart or else people will have too much Lingo considering they are now starting the new version. The only daytime switch is at 3:30, with 1 vs. 100 replacing Lingo. Next, I wish The Newlywed Game and Baggage were switched. Newlywed Game at 6pm at Baggage at 6:30 like it used to be. I still think they should have kept 1 vs. 100 at 5:30. I don’t think GSN should have kept Love Triangle in a 7pm and 9pm. Everything else is fine I guess.
As I read further into the schedule, GSN FLOODED the weekend schedule with Drew Carey’s Improv a ganza, especially on Saturday nights. Maybe his show did well on Saturday nights in the past couple weeks.
Also, starting June 13, Lingo is on at 5:30pm, but not new. Still the Bill Engvall addition.
Why does GSN still air Chain Reaction? It was an OK show and no one has probably seen Dylan Lane since 2007. Airing Chain Reaction is like airing repeats of Love Triangle in five years when it gets canceled in 2011.
In one way, I would like to see Love Triangle go into a second season, BUT 1 vs. 100 EVEN MORE.
GSN still airs Whammy! on weekends almost eight years after the last show aired
Looks like $25K Pyramid will be back to Labor Day 1985 during the week of June 13th.