Million Second Quiz Afterthoughts

[TLEberle]

I don\'t know what to do, and that\'s why I\'m not a TV producer. People say they don\'t want robots playing the game, but they also don\'t want people showing actual emotion at the conclusion (given NBC\'s track record, that was the real-est display I\'ve seen on a game or reality show in a long time). I didn\'t see any of the mill-about and maybe Brandon straightened out, but he was resigned to his fate with about a minute to go and kept on hitting the double and kept getting punished for it, slouching lower in his chair further with each of Andrew\'s right answers. That looked awful.

It\'s the same thing as adding a car game to the Money Cards: five point whatever times out of seven it\'s gonna end badly and even if the champion won thousands of dollars what you remember is the fail horns and no joy. Either reduce the money on the front end or back end; somebody wasn\'t going to win the huge prize but still had $300,000.

Either you have real folks playing an interesting game and you take the reactions you get for good or bad, or you get interchangeable processed game show contestants (like we saw on Deal or 1 vs. 100) where everything is fake to the Nth degree.

[Joe Mello]

In regards to \"fixing\" the final, is it possible to do a game like this where there\'s no one singular winner?

 

Also, would it have been more or less preferable had Brandon just answered the questions instead of spamming the doubler?

[clemon79]

I don\'t know what to do, and that\'s why I\'m not a TV producer.

Okay, but then you say:

It\'s the same thing as adding a car game to the Money Cards: five point whatever times out of seven it\'s gonna end badly and even if the champion won thousands of dollars what you remember is the fail horns and no joy.

...and it\'s not. The car game, I agree, was a bad addition because most of the time it ended the Money Cards on a down note, which we agree is bad TV. But MDQ is a head-to-head competition between two people, and you\'re gonna have blowouts. And getting blown out sucks, especially when you\'re not accustomed to getting blown out. But *none of that* is specific to the format.

I posit that the only thing that this incident on MDQ and the Car Game have in common is that both produced bad TV. And there are a *lot* of ways to produce bad TV.

[Jeremy Nelson]

but it looked awful to have Brandon \"miss out\" on the $2.2 million bonus and be depressed about it, as opposed to elated at winning $330,000.

Okay, but what are you gonna do? A nineteen-year-old kid who by his own admission hasn\'t been away from his folks for more than a couple days at a shot up until a week and a half ago had a moment of immaturity.Maybe I\'m reading the vibes wrong, but the vibe I am getting from the assemblage here is that they want to lay the blame for that at someone\'s feet, and I just don\'t see where you can lay it.

You can\'t lay the blame anywhere. He\'s 19 and on a roll making a few hundred thousand dollars, and he crashed when he got a bad set of questions. Sure, it was a little immature, but whether it\'s a trivia night, an academic bowl, or a real game show, many of you have  dominated other sets of questions and gotten a poisonous deck when it counted the most. It\'s a lot harder to smile and take a beating than some of the accusers would like to admit.


Besides, nobody wants to bring up the fact that he recovered pretty well after the clock ran down.

[Loogaroo]

A lot of these are winners, but I\'ll think a bit outside the box:

 

1) Fix the tiebreaker. Closest to the right number, single-question buzz-in, list question with multiple answers, even just keep on quizzing till someone misses, anything but the \"lock in the same answer 0.1 second slower than the other guy because there\'s no lock-in cue\" they used.

 

2) Keep the money count going AT ALL TIMES. If the guy is in the chair, it counts. Stop pausing it during union breaks and other instances when the player is still seated. If they have to take a break, then go ahead and stop the clock because he\'s not in the chair, but if his butt is planted there, there\'s no good reason not to keep the meter running.

 

3) Ditch Winner\'s Row. Have a top money winner for each 24-hour period (carrying over for whoever\'s in the chair at the end of each cycle), and then have each of them battling it out in the finals. Set up a single-elimination tournament ranked by earnings, with the top four fighting it out in the broadcast finale. Even if you don\'t pay every single person who gets in the chair, this increases the number of people who win something (while not really affecting the overall prize budget that much). It also eliminates the unfair advantage the Winner\'s Row creates, i.e. the opportunity to co-opt the score of another player and make it that much tougher for anyone else to get in the Top 4. (Seriously. By the end of the time, you would\'ve needed to spend 5 1/2 hours straight in the chair to get in WR - at the start, 2 1/2 hours would\'ve got you in no sweat.)

[jjman920]

 

 

but it looked awful to have Brandon \"miss out\" on the $2.2 million bonus and be depressed about it, as opposed to elated at winning $330,000.

Okay, but what are you gonna do? A nineteen-year-old kid who by his own admission hasn\'t been away from his folks for more than a couple days at a shot up until a week and a half ago had a moment of immaturity.Maybe I\'m reading the vibes wrong, but the vibe I am getting from the assemblage here is that they want to lay the blame for that at someone\'s feet, and I just don\'t see where you can lay it.

You can\'t lay the blame anywhere. He\'s 19 and on a roll making a few hundred thousand dollars, and he crashed when he got a bad set of questions. Sure, it was a little immature, but whether it\'s a trivia night, an academic bowl, or a real game show, many of you have dominated other sets of questions and gotten a poisonous deck when it counted the most. It\'s a lot harder to smile and take a beating than some of the accusers would like to admit.

It is a lot harder to smile in that situation, but then it isn\'t once I realize I\'ve already won enough money to pay my way through school and probably have enough left over to buy a nice car. I may have lost out on an extra $2.3 million, but that\'s one hell of a consolation prize.

 

$330,000 is probably the most a single person is going to win this television season behind Andrew. That\'s a nice feat.

 

/I\'ll keep hoping for a Million Dollar Winner on Millionaire and Wheel

//and who knows what Price has in store this season.

[Jimmy Owen]

Well, if it was a fait accompli, I probably would have asked Ryan to end the match and declare a winner rather than look like a spoiled child in losing.  To fill time, run a slow crawl to acknowledge the question writers, for which it must have been a herculian task of keeping the questions coming, both on and off TV. 

 

3 Changes I would make: Players keep the money they make while in the chair.  You can adjust the amount per second if there are budget concerns.

 

Winner\'s row is derived from Chair dwellers

 

I would make it a TV-only competition.

 

Lots of others but I am limited by the question to three.

[clemon79]

Well, if it was a fait accompli, I probably would have asked Ryan to end the match and declare a winner rather than look like a spoiled child in losing.

Right, and then everyone here screams and moans about him being a quitter.

[Loogaroo]

Winner\'s row is derived from Chair dwellers

 

As opposed to the random hobos plucked off the street that they used on the show.

 

 

I would make it a TV-only competition.

 

At which point it stops being The Million Second Quiz and becomes Two People Answering Questions For No Discernable Reason.

[Jimmy Owen]

 

Winner\'s row is derived from Chair dwellers

 

As opposed to the random hobos plucked off the street that they used on the show.

 

 

I would make it a TV-only competition.

 

At which point it stops being The Million Second Quiz and becomes Two People Answering Questions For No Discernable Reason.

 

Well, the OP limited me to three changes.  I would also change the title.   The Million Seconds could be measured in increments of 30 or 60 minute shows.  At the end of the million seconds, the winner\'s chair showdown would begin.

[That Don Guy]

 

 I would also change the title.   The Million Seconds could be measured in increments of 30 or 60 minute shows.  At the end of the million seconds, the winner\'s chair showdown would begin.

 

 

1,000,000 seconds is about 277 3/4 hours - that\'s over a full year of 5-day-a-week hour shows without repeats or pre-emptions.

[Jimmy Owen]

 

 

 I would also change the title.   The Million Seconds could be measured in increments of 30 or 60 minute shows.  At the end of the million seconds, the winner\'s chair showdown would begin.

 

 

1,000,000 seconds is about 277 3/4 hours - that\'s over a full year of 5-day-a-week hour shows without repeats or pre-emptions.

 

Sorta like what daytime tv used to be.

[Neumms]

One change: Keep the 24-hours-a-day, million seconds deal, but play Concentration instead of the quiz. Heck, NBC already owns it. Players could actually win prizes--cheaper in the wee hours off air, and boats and cars in prime time.

 

This seems far more interesting for viewers than a money clock going up and zeroing out over and over again for ten days without anybody pocketing anything until, when payout time finally comes, it\'s totally overshadowed by an huge yet arbitrary sum. 

[pianogeek]

How about Million Second Tic Tac Dough?


Oh, Thom McKee???

[TLEberle]

At which point it stops being The Million Second Quiz and becomes Two People Answering Questions For No Discernable Reason.

First off you deserve what you get for responding to another one of Jimmy\'s random posts: isn\'t that true of any game show? That it is a game show because people are playing a game and winning stuff while it is shown on television for the entertainment of the folks at home?