A Million Dollars?

[Ian Wallis]

I don't know about you but I really think the amount of money given away on reality/game shows has gotten way out of hand.  When \"Who Wants to be a Millionaire\" first came on, a million dollars seemed like a special, almost unreachable goal.

Since then, shows like \"Greed\", \"Twenty One\", \"Survivor\", \"Amazing Race\", \"Joe Millionaire\", \"For Love or Money\", and even \"Fear Factor's\" season premiere have also given away that sum.  A million dollars is given away so often now it doesn't seem special anymore.  I think that's one of the reasons Pepsi sponsored that \"Play for a Billion\" show a couple of weeks ago - to try to come up with a new figure just to grab attention.  Where does it end?   It almost seems like they're devaluing the achievement of winning that figure by giving it away so often.  It's gotten out of hand.

Anyone else agree, or disagree?

[reason1024]

Yup, I pretty much agree.

I don't think that Greed devalued the million; it offered more money TOTAL, but it was hard as heck to get it.  Then, even if you DID, you probably split it with your team.  It was infrequent, and by no means assured.

I can't argue against Twenty One devaluing huge prizes, because it DID just chuck money out the window at passing contestants.

But I think that the biggest reason we feel the million isn't as special is because of all the reality games.  $1 Million has become the standard prize, and someone is guaranteed to win that.  They haven't done a particularly good job of \"selling\" the million as a big sum of money, either.  On the dating shows, it's usually just a check rather than a pile o' cash.

$1,000,000 is the $10,000 of the 2000's.

[Matt Ottinger]

$1,000,000 is the $10,000 of the 2000's.

What a great way to put it!  The truth is that Millionaire and Survivor raised the bar, and now any newcomer to prime time pretty much assumes they have to match it.  Of course, it's becoming more and more common that the million dollar payouts are in the form of annuities.  

A big reason that the girl from \"For Love or Money\" turned down the million to appear on the sequel was that she was only really looking at $25K a year for 40 years.  I know that's a pretty big \"only\", but spread out like that (not to mention the tax bite), what sounds like a life-changing amount of money really isn't.

[tommycharles]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Sep 24 2003, 09:31 AM\'] A big reason that the girl from "For Love or Money" turned down the million to appear on the sequel was that she was only really looking at $25K a year for 40 years.  I know that's a pretty big "only", but spread out like that (not to mention the tax bite), what sounds like a life-changing amount of money really isn't. [/quote]
 Ok, so it's not a life changing amount of money, but for a lot of people (I'm not saying her, specifically), and extra $25k/year would double their income for the next 40 years.

ObGameshow: did the shows of the fifties (the honest ones) ever give annuities?

[aaron sica]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' date=\'Sep 24 2003, 07:50 AM\']
Since then, shows like "Greed", "Twenty One", "Survivor", "Amazing Race", "Joe Millionaire", "For Love or Money", and even "Fear Factor's" season premiere have also given away that sum.  A million dollars is given away so often now it doesn't seem special anymore.  I think that's one of the reasons Pepsi sponsored that "Play for a Billion" show a couple of weeks ago - to try to come up with a new figure just to grab attention.  Where does it end?   It almost seems like they're devaluing the achievement of winning that figure by giving it away so often.  It's gotten out of hand.

Anyone else agree, or disagree? [/quote]
 I agree with you...It seems as if a million dollars is definitely devalued...\"Fear Factor\" is definitely proof of that, giving a million away on the season opener, with no long game (dragged out in weeks like Survivor, or Amazing race)....

Funny how money works on game shows, though.......I remember thinking how much of a big deal $100,000 was in 1985 when the Pyramid gave it away during the tournaments, yet it's always a shot every night on WoF to land on the $100,000 envelope and win...

On the flip side, the top prize on MG was $5,000 in 1973, and when revived in 1998, was also $5,000....

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'tommycharles\' date=\'Sep 24 2003, 11:11 AM\']ObGameshow: did the shows of the fifties (the honest ones) ever give annuities?[/quote]
The contestants on \"You Bet Your Life\" received their funds in lump sums, while \"College Bowl\" winners had the money donated by GE to their college scholarship fund.  

In other words, there was no such thing as an honest big-money quiz show, as far as we know.  It's been well-documented that \"$64,000 Question\" did contestant interviewing so thorough and tailored the questions to the contestants' strengths (or weaknesses, if need be) that when Charlie Revson (the guy who ran Revlon) wanted someone gone, they were gone, unless they were Dr. Joyce Brothers.  And we all know about \"Twenty-One.\"  \"Name That Tune\" in its George DeWitt days (sorry, Tammy) seemed to be rigged up the yingyang (and when I watched the first John Glenn/Eddie Hodges show at the MTR last year there were several things that seemed not exactly right).  It's safe to say that the imitations of \"$64,000 Question\" all engaged in a certain amount of manipulation.

That said, all of the funds were lump sum.  Unless someone else knows of something sooner, the first annuity on a game show was \"$100,000 Name That Tune\"  (\"One of our players tonight could win $100,000--that's $10,000 a year for the next ten years\"--and didn't Tommy Oliver and the boys seem to be playing a little louder whenever Tom Kennedy said that second part?).

[dickoon]

As an aside, a rather Treasure Hunt-esque (that's Edwards Treasure Hunt rather than Kendall-Rice/Murnaghan-Perry Treasure Hunt) game show in the Netherlands has offered a jackpot of €5,000,000 by now, though I'm not sure whether it has yet been claimed. Accordingly, it seems reasonable that the next reasonably-winnable quantum leap in prizes will either be to five or ten million dollar/Euro/pound size prizes. I don't think Super Greed's four million dollars counts as reasonably-winnable. Usual caveats apply about how an interesting 10,000 dollar win would probably be more entertaining than a dull 10,000,000 dollar one.

Please include my standard rant about how the Turkish WWTBAM? really ought to have given away one treeeeeeeeelion lira instead of a mere five hundred billion, just for the sheer mathematical joy and hell of it.

WWTBAM? is over five years old now, at least here in the UK. Crikey, that's a long time.

Posting in the manner of the adverb derived from the adjective \"pernickety\",
Chris