I would hope that any members who've appeared on WoF figured I'm writing in a very broad sense as a TV viewer who knows none of them personally. If any feel smeared, my sincere apologies. I envy you.
My point there was to say that every contestant is someone's mom, dad, son or daughter, whether we like them or not, and just because they're dull to someone doesn't mean they're dull.
On the scale you suggest, I'd put current WoF contestants at about a three. Let's bump them to 7 and see how it works.
It's not strictly enthusiasm level, though. On the original WWTBAM, Regis was dealing largely with culled but randomly selected people from the phone. That was more interesting to me. They weren't kooks, but it was more natural, and Regis, to his credit, drew them out.
I would prefer the muted enthusiasm of the current crop of contestants to the shouting and carrying on that seemed to be the hallmark of ten years ago. (For reference, Catch 21, Lingo and Chain Reaction contestants are similarly irksome.) I'd also say that Doug van Gundy should be the patron saint of game show contestants but he's not dead yet.
Maybe Wheel promotes a week where they get contestants that way, maybe a local contest when they're on the road, say, in NYC. You play an online game well enough, you go into a drawing to win tickets. Win that, you show up, and they either pick from the crowd at random or screen them like TPIR. They get called onto the stage five minutes before cameras roll, set up the apple crates, let them spin a couple of times, then see what happens.
I've advocated for this too, specifically an audience draw once per road trip.
Plus we now have a floor for the winners of $10,000, and lots of times the winner more than doubles up after a bonus round victory. If contestants aren't going to scream and shout like it's Let's Make a Deal over winning $91,000 in the main game what can you do? Million Dollar victories get canned applause like it's a golf tournament. (Though on the other side of the coin, I would love to see waving around the prize wedges die in an inferno.)
Either that, or make changes to the show that actually add excitement. Yes, it's a pleasant show, but even Concentration, a pleasant show with organ music for heavens' sake, occasionally put winners in a glass box to lunge at paper money.
I thought this was a promotion that was apart and separate from the show itself. Was it a prize on the board, or what? And wasn't it slightly different than the standard money volcano?
