- "Wrongs." You're trying too hard. Three red "X"s are strikes to every viewer you have across all demographics. Don't try to overhaul common parlance into an exclusively-branded concept.
This reminds me of the Australian version of 1 vs. 100. At the beginning Eddie would refer to the bits of assistance as lifelines, and why not? That was his most famous TV show. Apparently someone on production got a bug in his ear because he abruptly started calling them 'helps' and he looked annoyed every time the words crossed his lips.
- Why is this big-money big-bombast prime-time network TV game show EVENT dribbling out cash at $1000 per question (with rare exception)?
This I don't mind as much. Since it's supposed to be 500 questions there's not a great way to dole out money with each question (on the other hand it could have been another money tree paradigm.)
The problem I have is that the money is banked along the way and referred to rarely--similar to Jeopardy in fact but Jeopardy has a compelling game and there's always a winner at the end of every show. Here there's no real sense of tension at all because so much of the money is safe and the Genius is only risking what's in the current pot. Since the "risk" pot doesn't get very big, that doesn't give the tension a chance to rise all that much.