This Week in Game Shows: January 3rd
All the holiday celebrations are over with and everyone is facing the cold, depressing realization that they have to return to work. Most of the game shows were on break for the past few weeks. Luckily some of your favorites will be returning on network, cable, and and syndication.
*Who Wants to be a Millionaire comes back after two weeks of reruns. Some trailers for the return have gone out and it looks like we may have a pretty decent winner or two, so check that out.
*GSN’s 1 VS 100 starts a week-long event tonight. All this week the top prize doubles to a big $100,000. The other prizes get some big increases also. The new money tree, with a jump for every ten people the One knocks off the Mob, is $500; $1,000; $2,000; $4,000; $6,000; $8,000; $10,000; $25,000; $50,000; $100,000. You’ll be seeing some pretty big winners. Again, this starts tonight, January 3rd, at 7:00PM ET and 10:00PM ET on GSN.
*Fox’s current headache, Million Dollar Money Drop, returns to the network on Tuesday, January 4th, at 9:00PM ET. The ratings for the opening week on December 20th weren’t that good so we’ll see what happens. We’ll also see if they can screw up any more questions. Please, guys, just pick up the pace. Go back into the editing bay and speed things up. It would do a world of good. There’s no excuse not to get through about ten questions. Somehow the British version can do it and they’re live.
*NBC’s popular stunt game show Minute to Win It comes back for its regular run on Wednesday, January 5th, at 8:00PM ET. You voted it as the second best new game show of 2010 so I’m sure many of you are looking forward to that. No word if any of the changes that came into play during the special holiday episodes will stick, but the same format of completing ten challenges in 60 seconds for $1,000,000 will be retained.
If I missed anything go ahead and comment about it.
Only other thing I know is that Rich Fields returns to “Wheel” for a week-long stint. And he’s in-studio.
Scratch that. Jim Thornton is still around. Not sure when Rich returns.
Tuesday is the 4th Alex, not Wednesday…
You are also missing that Wipeout returns with it’s special Winter Wipeout episodes beginning on Thursday at 8 EST and the Million Dollar Money Drop will also be airing a new episode on Thursday as well!
i like the complaint about the inaccuracy of money drop — followed by an inaccuracy + missing information. does no one ever learn the “judge not lest ye be judged” lesson?
Really? Whenever me saying Wednesday the 4th, instead of Wednesday the 5th, causes a couple to lose a potential $800,000 from gameplay, we can talk. At least I corrected it just about the minute after Chris left the comment and didn’t say I was right and then backtrack a day later.
But I still like the show, whoever you are. I still watch and promote.
Wait, can I come back to play Buzzerblog again due to your mistake? :)
Who is going to be the permanet “Wheel” announcer? Rich Fields or Jim Thornton? Jim sounds a bit better than Rich.
VH1 has moved Don’t Forget the Lyrics to 2AM EST and 2:30AM EST starting last Monday.
are we gonna do a chat for MD2 tonight?
Well, so far they’ve fixed up MD$D a bit. Less stalling on the first three questions, and a bit of drama on the 4th. So far so good…
And, thankfully, no Howie-style stalling yet…
UGH! I spoke too soon. They did one on Question 5…
I liked how they started Million Dollar Money Drop by reminding us of its run in December, and by Pollak saying “Million Dollar Money Drop is BACK!” It really got me pumped up for the episode. I don’t know why, but this game show feels suited to a Winter-Spring run rather than a Summer-run, which seems to be common-place these days for game shows, especially when repeats of other shows abound on networks.
Considering how FOX pulled The Rich List after just one episode, you would think that if the ratings were not what they expected for Million Dollar Money Drop, they would’ve just cancelled it after its December run. Obviously FOX must have something up their sleeves — either that, or they find the ratings acceptable for one of the few game shows they’ve aired in the past 10 years (Greed, 5th Grader…can anyone remember any other major game shows FOX has aired?).
I think Million Dollar Money Drop is here to stay for a while. Besides, with NBC’s Minute to Win It and ABC’s Wipeout, FOX needs some sort of game show on their programming lineup to appeal to us game show fans. Otherwise, their network won’t be in the loop.
Anyways, my comments are the same. Million Dollar Money Drop needs to straggle with contestants. Other than that, I have no complaints. I like Pollak since he’s funny and I like the format of the game as well. Hopefully, it’ll stick around for several seasons like Endemol’s other hits Deal or No Deal, Wipeout and 1 VS 100. And if it does, then hopefully we’ll be able to get more questions into episodes and not need Pollak to have to repeat the rules each time a new couple is introduced.