News Flashes: Champions, Losers, and “Shark Tank”
Nothing of any real notice is going on right now but we did manage to find a few small news pieces to touch upon.
*Everyone was all excited for Jeopardy! champion Roger Craig after winning a record $77,000 in one game. However, sadly, his journey to become the next Ken Jennings, which many seemed to be really hoping for, came to an end. He lost on Tuesday after amassing $231,200. We’ll be seeing him in the tournament of champions for sure. A game show contestant who makes national headlines doesn’t come often, so it’s a shame he’s gone so soon.
*Don’t Forget The Lyrics! debuted this past Monday. According to PIFeedback.com, it’s averaged to a .4 rating. Leave your feedback about the show.
*More information on season two of ABC’s Shark Tank is coming out. We get a lot of emails about it, and if you’ve got an idea you want to present to the sharks, you can click here. We already discussed Jeff Foxworthy joining the panel for some reason I’m not exactly sure of for three episodes. They are getting another guest panelist which makes more sense. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban will be joining the panel for three episodes. He’s a successful entrepreneur, much like the other sharks, so this one works well. No word on the debut date, but the first season was great so I’m looking forward to the new shows.
I watched Don’t Forget the Lyrics the other day and was pretty pumped to catch it because, well, I had forgot it was coming to syndication. Luckily, my Tivo caught it in suggestions, so I could fast forward through the breaks. I like the show but was ultimately disappointed for a couple of reasons…
1) Only 5 songs in a half-hour? That’s terrible.
2) What happens if you miss a song? Do you lose the game, lose your money, lose half your money, lose that step on the money chain? I wasn’t sure.
Mark McGrath did a decent job, so I can’t complain about him.
DFTL doing worse than Temptation ratings-wise? I wouldn’t have called that.
I would’ve. It seems as if Fox butchered it from “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire meets Name That Tune” to a syndicated version of The Singing Bee. Not a good look if you’re a million dollar game show. And I caught it too, Alex. It seems like they took too long of a commercial break on the second one, the station breaks were longer than the national breaks. Now I know that Fox is relatively new at this game show producing business (other than the shows they’d distributed in the past), but they have to do better than this. I’m just saying.
Don’t Forget the Lyrics was just, well, forgettable. Yet again I am reminded of this quote from Farenheit 451:
“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
Seriously, $50,000 for knowing the lyrics to five pop songs? Can you say, get-rich-quick porn? I wonder what Sir Andrew John Wiles got for proving Fermat’s Last Theorem. And the fact that most people don’t know either names only proves my point.
I saw the first episode of Don’t Forget the Lyrics (thankfully on tape). Honestly, I could not stand that show. First of all, the music was awful, but in a good show that would be bearable. The host was obnoxious (almost more so that Guy Fieri), and that game was badly explained, despite the fact that it’s really simple. The contestant himself was beyond annoying and felt like he wouldn’t be out of place on Deal or No Deal. Not a show I’m going to watch again, nor a show I want to see do well frankly.
if you say so then its a PIECE OF **** sorry about that anyway good thing i couldn’t find DFTL because it could be that.
The format was alright, but they quick go through 2 songs within the first 5 minutes, have a 2-3 minute break, play the next song, have a 5 minute break, play the last song and then have a 10 minute break before hearing the contestant say i’m not going for the encore song. Just pathetic. At least spread the songs out evenly if you only want 5 songs. And where’s Ricky Minor? I know he quit american idol (didn’t he?) but he should be able to show up now. With this stupid myspace karaoke, there are just too many plugs for it. Wasn’t too impressed.
Ricky Minor is with The Tonight Show with Jay Leno now.
I was never a fan of the show to begin with, and would’ve much rather preferred a syndicated version of “The Singing Bee”, with maybe a $25K grand prize and returning champions. I’m glad the latter lives on via CMT, but that show deserved a much better fate.
Anyways, I watched an episode on VH-1, and when they stretched out the reveal on the $10,000 song, I switched back to “Jeopardy!” I’m not the biggest “5th Grader” fan either, but that show is a lot more engaging in syndication.
Hole in the Wall premieres on Cartoon Network at 7:30pmEST Oct. 6th with Real World’s Teck Holmes as the host.