Ratings Report: “Millionaire” and “Family Feud” See Week Two Ratings
The very important second-week ratings are in. As we say often, second week is important because you need to see what percentage of people are happy with the new season and if people will turn away or keep watching. The two shows we care most about this season are Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Family Feud since they both underwent some pretty big changes between seasons. If week two ratings are any indication, people don’t mind the changes, apparently they like them, and it’s always a smaller subset of angry people that are the most vocal.
Let’s start with Millionaire. The first week saw a 5% increase to a 2.1. Week two saw yet another increase. It went up yet another 5% to a 2.2 rating. It’s doing exactly the same as last season in terms of ratings points, and week two stayed the same last season. It didn’t have the increase like now. So we’ll have to track it long term, but it seems the new format is OK with people and, like we’ve been saying from the start, it’s the same exact show except the questions are mixed up. Big deal.
But like stated above, you hear some quiet, sane complements and pieces of constructive criticism from the generally favorable people, which are apparently in the majority. However, it’s the smaller group of viciously angry people (about a TV show for some reason) that shout and drown out anything else. If you just went on that reception alone you’d figure the show is doing poorly. Think again. Let’s hope this keeps up. As good as the old version was, it was getting stale and they managed to revamp the game play as gently as possible. I highly doubt the celebrity shows increased ratings at all either. No one really knew about it until a day or two beforehand, and that was only the online crowd.
Family Feud could be on its way to a really big season, possibly the biggest in a very long time, if it keeps up this pace. It inched up another 7% last week to a 1.5 rating. It’s constantly growing. The biggest thing that is going to keep Family Feud going is to keep pushing online viral videos like the now infamous Fast Money from a few days ago. That video is getting tons of attention and is over 200,000 views in just a few days. The reception for Steve has been big from those people who didn’t even know the show was on and that he’s hosting. You can’t ask for much more. If they can keep pushing these big clips of him and spread them around, Steve and Feud will be around for a long time.
The other syndie shows we cover had good second weeks also. People are remembering, “Oh yeah, the season started.” Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! both jumped 8% last week. Wheel made it to a 6.4 and Jeopardy! a 5.5. Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? had its season debut and went up a big 30% to 1.3. People are definitely excited to see the show back.
Photo courtesy of Valleycrest Productions Ltd
Ratings courtesy of Broadcasting & Cable
I have to say that I love the new version of Millionaire, it’ more exciting and and it is definitely a blast to play along with. Granted the classic format was great back in it’s time, but I agree that it was time for a change. Hopefully this format will stick around for a good while!!!!!
FWIW, in regards to a previous post by Alex:
Today’s contestant had as his top two categories, IIRC, “Tut’s Treasures” and “Chemistry 101.” Those ended up as the second and third questions in his stack, and they most certainly were not questions that the vast majority of players would know immediately. So I’m guessing that the original stack of questions IS, in fact, the original difficulty order; equally importantly, it shows that they’re NOT always staying put, as some people had originally suggested.
Uggh. Submitted too early.
In any case . . . I like the increased strategy aspect, although I still think it would be better with one more lifeline (I’ve suggested 50-50, but at a cost of half the money for that question).
“Don’t Forget the Lyrics” reportedly got a 0.9 rating, which is not great by any stretch, but at least it’s a nice step up from last week’s 0.5 debut. The jump reminds me of “5th Grader” last season, which experienced a near-double ratings spike as well (IIRC, it related to the show’s appearances on CMT and MyNetworkTV being factored in).
It does, which is the reason for the spike (the little that it is) of Lyrics’ ratings. But, all-in-all, not a bad week ratings wise in the game department.
I’m really glad that Feud’s ratings are growing. Steve has done a great job, and it’s been a blast to watch.
Thanks for the note, David. Really glad you are enjoying the show!
-FF
Glad to see both shows are doing well. I thought that “Millionaire”‘s changes were a fresh spin, and have been saying the same thing about the only major change was that dollar values are now randomized. Still not a big fan of mixing dollar values but not difficulties to accompany them, but it’s not the worst thing in the world either.
Overall I like Millionaire’s changes a lot more than I thought I would. Particularly replacing the hot seat with the podium.. it’s really made the show more dynamic.
I still think the format could use a few tweaks though.. I HATE the new music package for one. Way too generic-sounding. Either bring back the old stuff or go back to the drawing board!
I also agree that I think there should be more lifeline variety. Maybe replace one of the jumps and bring back 50/50 or double dip, and give round 2 contestants “phone-a-friend” in addition to any carried over lifelines. I think the jumps aren’t quite working as intended since so many contestants are burning them on the first couple questions.
Lastly, while I like the idea of randomizing the questions, the whole randomizing the dollar amounts as well and doing the Deal or no Dealesque reveal gets old quick. Just tie the money back to the question difficulty, but still shuffle it back around everywhere. I think nothing would stink more as a contestant (or even as a viewer) to spend 5 minutes agonizing over a really tough question only to find out it was worth a couple hundred bucks.
That’s 100% Correct. It’s driven me to the point that I can’t watch it anymore. I’ve changed my DVR Recording from the New Episodes to Last Seasons, because the clock really grew on me.
This format is good, but the bad parts just drive me nuts!
I finally found one issue I have with the show, and I hate to be nerdy about it but here we go: the music, especially in the final four questions, is lacking. I can stand the rest of it. It’s good but not great. However, the weakness of it showed up in those final four questions. There were easy places for the giant Millionaire fanfare, the little Super Millionaire “next dimension” cue when you hit the final four, and more stuff from the entire package. I like the new version, but round two shows the some issues with the music.
Agreed with you guys on that. The shuffle format is great, but the music could be alot better, especially since the ones they replaced is considered to be one of the best.
Why couldn’t they get the Strachans like last time? Did the lawsuit had anything to do with that? Was the show too broke to get them? Or did the producers thought differently?
Now I’m not as down on The NEW $1,000,000 Money Tree as the Game Show News Net guys who savaged it with two Fs and a D- average, but I have to say that I’m not really enjoying the show that much more than the old format, if at all. The music is bland and derivative.The set evolved ok, but not spectacularly. The pace of the show has slowed considerably. The nine guaranteed question value reveals don’t help, of course, but I think that contestants are taking a lot more time on the former middle tier questions and using more lifelines than I remember, because they’re overthinking it in part because they don’t know the level of difficulty.
Which gets to the heart of my dislike, which is that I’m not confident that we’ll see contestants get any closer to the top prize than in the past. Everything feels like a budget move.The questions are still too hard. The contestants are still too NY-centered, not terribly bright or confident in what they do know. (“I think I know, but I’m not 10,000% sure so I’ll burn a lifeline thus ensuring I don’t get to the top tier”) Recent contestants have gotten a little farther, but it still feels that no one will ever win the million again. That’s enough to keep me from watching.
Here’s the thing for me: it should be incredibly hard. All I wanted was the game to feel like it can be won. In four weeks, we’ve had three $250,000 questions. We had someone go for the $250,000 today, and only one person did that last season. The same guy had a shot at seeing a $500,000 question if he didn’t waste his Jump. The game has started to feel like someone can go far for the first time in a while. I don’t know if they will and frankly if we keep having exciting, potentially big money games like we did today I don’t care. They could have very well given away $250,000 today already. I’ll take losing one question a show if we can see a few more $250,000+ questions. Given how it’s gone this week, and given the history of Million Dollar Movie Week, I’d bet money that we’d see a $500,000 question, if not a million, then.
They are throwing big money out there and showing more huge money questions than ever before. Only the Millionaire nerds are going to care about the budget. The regular viewers are seeing that they are showing more huge money questions than ever before. I don’t know what more you can ask for on a show in daytime, where most daytime shows struggle to give away more than $10,000 a day (except for the Sony ones obviously).
I haven’t it felt it be more winnable at all. I’ve seen contestants burning lifelines as fast as ever. I’ve seen more crashing and burning than I remember. You appear to have forgotten the first two weeks of regular contestants where no one got to Round Two, and only a couple got close. Only the last three contestants have gotten there. They’ve fallen like so many have the past, what, seven years since Nancy Christy? Even now that it’s only 12 questions (14-2 jumps), I don’t feel any more confident because of the ridiculous top level questions. I mean, the Toy Hall of Fame???
And it won’t just be Millionaire “nerds” who notice. I think people notice that TPIR contestants lose a lot and I think people will notice the same for Millionaire contestants. I think wwtbam.biz showed that contestants are winning 30% less on average thus far. That’s hard to miss. It’s one of the reasons the show was losing ratings in the first place, IMO.
Finally, the pace has slowed down more than one question per show. Going back to bam.biz, last season (with clock) averaged 16 questions per day. The one before that averaged 14 questions. Up until now, this season’s only getting to about 10 or 11. So in conclusion, the show’s taking MORE time per contestant to give away LESS money per contestant. We’ll see if anything changes.
Here’s a reason. The show doesn’t have as much money as they used to. Nothing more, nothing less. If the budget and ratings were better, we’d at least see more Millionaires, but interest in this show has been way down from it’s glory days and most people these days tend to watch the show….and for that matter a lot of game shows, when they’re bored. There’s a reason that Millionaire versions around the world have changed formats from the original, and that’s mainly because of people getting bored of it.
I should also note that only a handful of times, a syndicated game show has given out a million or a huge prize of that magnitude…and Millionaire contestants are a huge chunk of that list.