I was not fond of Maury Povich as a host. However, 21 was a great show and should have had a longer life on NBC.
Agreed on both counts. In fact, if you were watching the reruns on GSN today, you probably caught the episode in which a player struck out and Maury made that fact known to his opponent before he selected his question value for his turn of play. Of course, he went for the easiest 1-point question and won the game. (As I recall, the old
$64,000 Challenge quiz show of the 1950s ended up changing hosts after their first choice of hosts ending up doing poorly in his role.)
Sadly, what ultimately killed the revived
Twenty-One was NBC's overly ambitious effort to make it a really big-money show. They later did cut the prize amounts, but still ended up with someone who won over $1.7 million on the show -- too much for the network's budget!
In retrospect, I think the show would have been better if they had awarded the really big money in its end game, rather than its main game. Indeed, the show's end game was poorly executed, in my opinion, with a contestant getting its first three questions right (for $60,000) having to risk it all just for another $40,000 payoff on the fourth question, then for only another $50,000 on the fifth question, and $60,000 on the sixth.
A better prize structure for that show, in my opinion, and which I once proposed, would be the following:
Main game: $25,000 (all wins by all players).
End game: 1 question right, $5,000.
2 questions right, $15,000.
3 questions right, $30,000.
4 questions right, $50,000.
5 questions right, $75,000.
(Note that these amounts are one-half of the end-game payoff amounts the show had when it aired originally on NBC.)
6 questions right: $75,000 plus the end-game's \"21 Jackpot,\" which starts at $150,000.
As on the NBC version, a player who tries for and misses a question in the end-game would lose any money won in the game up to that point. However, that money would be added to the \"21 Jackpot,' conceiveably giving that player a chance to win it all back if he or she was successful in winning the next main game. Thus, if a player answered the first three questions in the end game and then tried for and missed the game's fourth question, his forfeited $60,000 would be added to the jackpot for the next end game, making it worth $210,000, etc. Of course, a player can also elect to stop playing the end-game at any time after a correctly answering any question, and keep the money won up to that point -- in which case the next end game would be played with the same jackpot. Also, the player retains all main-game winnings (at $25,000 per win), regardless of any result in his subsequent end game.
Michael Brandenburg
(Well, maybe if NBC decides to bring the show back again after another 42 years…)
