Third Time's a Charm? Pyramid in Development for TBS

[Matt Ottinger]

I say make it two rounds, celeb gives once, civilian gives once.

You know, this might not be bad.  I'd tweak your idea and make the two rounds 45 seconds, and have ten subjects.  That's the same amount of game play as the original version, but you're still saving time with less back-and-forth.

[TheLastResort]

Maybe I'm overthinking this, or maybe stuck in the past, but if you have only four categories in the front game, that would change the mini-pyramid to a square shape.

Keep the six categories.  Two would be unused.  If one of them had a bonus, too bad.

[Matt Ottinger]

Maybe I'm overthinking this, or maybe stuck in the past, but if you have only four categories in the front game, that would change the mini-pyramid to a square shape.

Keep the six categories.  Two would be unused.  If one of them had a bonus, too bad.

Make a square and surround it by some triangles.  This is not an insurmountable problem.

[chris319]

These are all minor game tweaks, not a major "reimaging".

[TimK2003]

Keep the front game as-is.  

On the one hand, if you are paired up with a Z-List celeb who can't play worth shiat either in the giving or receiving department, then the contestant can use the 3rd (round) category to either give or receive to make the best of it.  If only given the chance to play only 2 categories, and the celeb gives (and sucks) first, you're pretty much dead meat.  With the 3rd category, the contestant knows what setup was stronger (give to, or receive from the celeb) and they can try to make up for a bad category or bad celeb that either gave or received poorly.

On the other hand, if your talent coordinators do find both celebs and civilians who can play the game effectively, there is a good chance that they won't need all 30-seconds anyway for every category.

Overall, even with the amount of time devoted to commercials, if you take out the promotional prize considerations at the end by making the game an all-cash show, have the credits flashing through on the lower 1/3rd of the screen during the final act/wrap-up of the day's winnings, and limiting the chit-chat to a fraction of what was done on the Clark version between rounds, I really think you can still fit a pair of six 30-second category rounds and two WC games into 22 minutes and still not look rushed.

[Casey Buck]

Overall, even with the amount of time devoted to commercials, if you take out the promotional prize considerations at the end by making the game an all-cash show, have the credits flashing through on the lower 1/3rd of the screen during the final act/wrap-up of the day's winnings, and limiting the chit-chat to a fraction of what was done on the Clark version between rounds, I really think you can still fit a pair of six 30-second category rounds and two WC games into 22 minutes and still not look rushed.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the Clark version was about 22 minutes (or maybe 22.5 minutes) long. Most cable-original shows these days run about 21-22 minutes per half hour in length, so hopefully, nothing would have to be shortened format wise.

However, the format would have been much worse off if Pyramid went to CBS Daytime. With their present commercial loads, the show would have only ran about 19 minutes in length (an hour of Price runs ~38 minutes long).

[chrisholland03]

Considering "what was broken with Donnymid" is "everything", it shouldn't be that hard to fix.

For any of us who had the chance to see the TRULY god-awful pilots from a few years earlier, Donnymid was a treat.

*cough cough*Pyramid Partners*cough cough*

[MSTieScott]

Regarding the proposed gameplay changes, has it been announced whether this "Pyramid" would be a half-hour in length? Because the last pilot was for an hour-long show -- they fit plenty of gameplay in the hour without radical rule changes (though it did reintroduce the "you're out of luck if you get a bad celebrity" factor).

[calliaume]

Regarding the proposed gameplay changes, has it been announced whether this "Pyramid" would be a half-hour in length? Because the last pilot was for an hour-long show -- they fit plenty of gameplay in the hour without radical rule changes (though it did reintroduce the "you're out of luck if you get a bad celebrity" factor).

I thought I read an hour-long show, but that could have been referring to last year's pilot.

If they are doing an hour, you could still do six categories, 30 seconds -- but then have two complete games with two different contestants in each game, and a third game where the two winners square off.  The only drawback is the "who gets stuck with the rotten celebrity" issue that the '80s edition skirted so well -- but by the time the '80s version came around, Bob Stewart seemed to have the knack of pairing off celebs that were within striking distance of each other in terms of gameplaying skill.  (Which is also a reason why some of our "I never appear on television except for this show" celebrities kept getting called back.)

[Unrealtor]

Regarding the proposed gameplay changes, has it been announced whether this "Pyramid" would be a half-hour in length? Because the last pilot was for an hour-long show -- they fit plenty of gameplay in the hour without radical rule changes (though it did reintroduce the "you're out of luck if you get a bad celebrity" factor).

I thought I read an hour-long show, but that could have been referring to last year's pilot.

If they are doing an hour, you could still do six categories, 30 seconds -- but then have two complete games with two different contestants in each game, and a third game where the two winners square off.  The only drawback is the "who gets stuck with the rotten celebrity" issue that the '80s edition skirted so well -- but by the time the '80s version came around, Bob Stewart seemed to have the knack of pairing off celebs that were within striking distance of each other in terms of gameplaying skill.  (Which is also a reason why some of our "I never appear on television except for this show" celebrities kept getting called back.)

By the late '80s, especially on $100K Pyramid, he also wasn't booking anyone he didn't already know was a solid player.

My answer to how you solve the crappy celebrity problem in a three-game format is to play the first two games with the same pair of contestants, then the winner of the first part of the show plays against the returning champion in game 3 (meaning that whoever gets stuck with them has had at least one chance to win with a decent celebrity in the past.)

However, for reasons discussed above in terms of time available, I feel like four games in an hour would be a better fit, allowing partner swaps in both the first and second halves of the show. If you guesstimate that a game in the '80s could be done in about 8 minutes without rushing, then three of those would barely fill half of a 40-42 minute show.

[clemon79]

My answer to how you solve the crappy celebrity problem

It saddens me that we're all automatically dismissing "don't book crappy celebrities" as a potential solution.

Mind you, I understand why that is. But it's sad that we're accepting it, however implicitly.

[chris319]

My answer to the "crappy celebrity" problem is quite simple: use regulars. HS always had Paul Lynde, Rose Marie, Wally Cox, Charley Weaver/George Gobel on the panel. MG always had Brett, Charles, Richard and a short list of ladies in seat 6. Goodson's NY panel shows had the same panelists for extended periods. If they're unwilling or unable to find new faces who are decent players week after week, find 2, 3 or 4 pair of celebs who are good players and don't book anyone else; simply rotate through the regulars.

[Unrealtor]

My answer to how you solve the crappy celebrity problem

It saddens me that we're all automatically dismissing "don't book crappy celebrities" as a potential solution.

Mind you, I understand why that is. But it's sad that we're accepting it, however implicitly.

If you solve the crappy celebrity problem, you solve all other variants of the mismatched celebrity problem, including the "good player having a bad day" problem and the "(s)he's better/worse than we thought" problem.

[TLEberle]

I would love for them to shorten the front game, mainly because I've always found it boring. 20 seconds was an interesting twist, but then it was too easy to crap out and make the game a runaway.

What's boring about it? I think the interesting thing about the front game is the tightrope of "will the team get to 21" and then "who will win the tiebreaker", waiting to see who will fall off the tightrope first. A problem with 6-in-20 is that it doesn't allow much time to come back from one missed connection. If you don't get it straight away there isn't really time to get it again. As boring as it is to watch game after game go to 21-21 ties (and really, was it that boring?) I thought it was much worse to see teams that couldn't score more than a couple of points.

There were many, many things about it that we didn't like, but there were also many things that were very much in line with the classic show, and some modern tweaks that might actually have been a slight improvement.

On the other hand, the things they got wrong they got very very wrong. If you were to watch the show without judging based on the previous series, you still have the removal of carryover champions which removes some of the tension in the winner's circle, the tournament of champions with a strange hurdle for entry and the likelihood of a complete anticlimax. Plus there's the category names and absurd judgment calls, as well as the inability of the director to hold a single shot of the team as they play a round.

[Fedya]

I tend to agree with Travis.  Something I think I've said here a number of times in the past about the Osmond Pyramid is that I think they got the difficulty backwards.  While you don't want a game that's so easy it will give away too much money (making the bonus round boring), you don't want to make the celebrities look like total idiots if you can avoid it.  One of the things about 7-in-30 is that there was enough time for celebrities and players recover from a difficult word and look respectable.  One problem at the beginning of the 6-in-20, and you'd have a team getting a 2.

The Winner's Circle, when the writers didn't come up with idiotic categories (I'm talking to you, Regis' coffee cup) or bizarre judging, seemed to be easier than the 80s version.