ABC Millionaire Coming Back

[The Ol' Guy]

Two ideas for what they're worth -

For the last three or four questions, put your fate in your own hands. Do an old-fashioned revolving drum with 30 cards for each level - four levels, four drums. Draw out your own sealed question card. Give each question a number so Reege can tip off the control room for the graphics. Make the player think they had a hand in their final fate, instead of blaming everything on a question arbitrarily selected by the producers.

Maximum :90 to make your choice of answer. :60 would be cool - Talk about tension and anxiety. After all, if putting a play clock in football and basketball makes the action happen faster, why not here? We can all be anxious for the contestant together in real time.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Jan 27 2004, 12:17 PM\'] [quote name=\'Brandon Brooks\' date=\'Jan 27 2004, 11:15 AM\'] I must not be able to read, because I didn't see where he said that.[/quote]
I think his fascinating reasoning is that since 25 grand is $25000 that 25000 grand is $25M, yes? [/quote]
 Yes, that's what he appears to be saying.  $25 GRAND would be $25,000.  But $25,000 GRAND would (taken literally) be $25,000,000.

What I can't tell is whether Thad himself was being serious, whether he cluelessly didn't understand what the original author obviously meant or whether he was just being sarcastic in a poorly executed effort to be funny.

[Peter Sarrett]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Jan 26 2004, 09:48 PM\']My biggest problem with the syndicated show is that it's painfully obvious that they're NOT selecting the people who do the best on their 30-question test.  If they were, they'd regularly be getting Jeopardy-caliber contestants and it only takes watching for a couple of days to see that this simply isn't the case.
[/quote]
Matt: You're just plain wrong here.  I can't vouch for the procedure during season two, but in the first syndicated season you had to pass the test before you even got to speak with a producer.  The pool of potential players from which the producers picked (Peter Piper, eat your heart out) consisted of those players who passed the 30 question test.

I'll also point out that the play of Millionaire is significantly less forgiving than Jeopardy-- one wrong answer and you're done.  I'm sure most contestants on Millionaire know more answers than it seems, but are really, really scared of blowing it and so use their lifelines poorly.  That was certainly true for me.

The questions on the syndicated version are harder than they were in the Regis era, so comparisons to the Fastest Finger days are not on a level playing field.

That said, I'd agree that Jeopardy appears to set a higher knowledge standard for their contestants than Millionaire does.  I think much of that is due to the nature of the games.  Since Jeopardy is a competition, it's important to have good competitors who will create an exciting game.  On Millionaire, each player stands alone and producers are perhaps more willing to have non-genius contestants who are entertaining in their own right.

  - Peter

[TravisP]

Since ABC has been given permission to rework on the music on Celador it would make it better if they re-introduce the original music cue for Final Answer (Going orange) as the original UK series had a special cue for the upper tier questions but it was only used 3 times before changing to the same cue for the rest of the questions this was down to time.

http://www.geocities.com/tpenery/finalanswer.wav

[tyshaun1]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jan 27 2004, 01:56 AM\'] According to a couple sites I found, over 300,000 machines were released worldwide. So I'd say yes.
Remember that Ms Pac Man came out as a conversion kit, in addition to being a standalone game. So a lot of those Pac Man machines were, well, gelded. So that might be why you don't see so many around today...they all had a sex change! [/quote]
 Enjoying this off-topic moment........

Midway produced 96,000 units of Pac-Man total. Counting all the bootlegs (it was the most bootlegged game of all time) there probably was around 300,000 units floating around.......

Ms. Pac-Man was the most mass-produced arcade game of all time, with 115,000 units made, none of which were dedicated. They were all piggy-backed on Pac-Man (which helped Midway lose its license with Namco and why Namco now owns Ms. Pac-Man, even though they had nothing to do with its development.......)

ObGameShow: Who in the world would be crazy enough to go for $10Mil or $10K?!

Tyshaun

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Peter Sarrett\' date=\'Jan 27 2004, 06:19 PM\'] [quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Jan 26 2004, 09:48 PM\']My biggest problem with the syndicated show is that it's painfully obvious that they're NOT selecting the people who do the best on their 30-question test.  If they were, they'd regularly be getting Jeopardy-caliber contestants and it only takes watching for a couple of days to see that this simply isn't the case.
[/quote]
Matt: You're just plain wrong here.  I can't vouch for the procedure during season two, but in the first syndicated season you had to pass the test before you even got to speak with a producer.  The pool of potential players from which the producers picked (Peter Piper, eat your heart out) consisted of those players who passed the 30 question test. [/quote]
 Fair enough.  I've never seen the Millionaire test so I don't have a frame of reference for it.  Perhaps it's substantially easier than the Jeopardy one.

My larger point was comparing the Vierra-era (!) game to the Philbin-era one, and comparing the caliber of contestant who plays this version to the caliber of player who played the original version (i.e. the phone qualifiers).  I agree with you that the questions are harder overall, but I also remain convinced that the caliber of player (again, overall) is just not as good in the syndicated version.  

I know individual examples can be picked apart, but just to use the show that happens to be on as I type this, one contestant used his ATA lifeline to have 94% of the audience tell him hamburger is named for a city in Germany, and the next contestant had to ask for help on the $100 question.  I find myself consistantly frustrated with examples like this on the syndie show in a way that I just don't recall happening with Philbin's call-in players.

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Jan 27 2004, 06:00 PM\'] one contestant used his ATA lifeline to have 94% of the audience tell him hamburger is named for a city in Germany, and the next contestant had to ask for help on the $100 question.  I find myself consistantly frustrated with examples like this on the syndie show in a way that I just don't recall happening with Philbin's call-in players. [/quote]
 The $100 question about tabloids could have passed for a $2k level pop culture based question I think. Definitely among the more difficult $100 questions I've seen(note that nearly a third of the voting audience got it wrong, too); it belonged as a low level question on the November pop culture week of shows.

[starcade]

First off, from reading Steve, I don't think the $320K is a Plateau in this version.  You miss on Tier III, and you go home with $10K.  There goes all the guessing.

I like seeing Millionaire back, and getting the Phone Game will get me a new phone, but at TEN TIMES THE STAKES???  Eh???

But BRING BACK THE PHONE GAME!

---------

Of course, here's another point:  What kind of difficulty do you think we'll have here?  I think even worse than the syndie version!!!

----------

And to Don's suggestion:

You sure you haven't seen "Who Wants to Be an Erotic Billionaire?" a few too many times???  

[starcade]

Goongas:  Re: Survivor...

He (Burnett) might have the right to do it, but it just seems he does it in the interests of screwing certain contestants.  I still assert that, at best, he might only know that he's going to do a change or two each season.

[ChuckNet]

My biggest problem with the syndicated show is that it's painfully obvious that they're NOT selecting the people who do the best on their 30-question test. If they were, they'd regularly be getting Jeopardy-caliber contestants and it only takes watching for a couple of days to see that this simply isn't the case.

So while I agree with your intuitive point -- a 30-question test ought to be better than a 3-question test -- the fact is that, for whatever reason, the caliber of game play was significantly better under the original rules than it has been with the syndicated show.

Exactly...the phone game, for the most part, encouraged prospective contestants to think fast and have some degree of familarity w/the show, particularly the FF round...rarely in the ABC days did you see a contestant use a lifeline on the first tier ($100-$1K) of questions, and now, it happens at least once a week.

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

[Peter Sarrett]

Exactly...the phone game, for the most part, encouraged prospective contestants to think fast and have some degree of familarity w/the show, particularly the FF round

Since the FF round is gone in the syndicated version, thinking fast is irrelevant.  You have as much time as you need in the hotseat.

Not to sound like a broken record, but... the questions are harder.  Now that Game Show Network is showing Regis reruns, it's really easy to watch old and new back to back and compare.  In the Regis era, it was almost a given (ok, slight hyperbole) that you'd make it to $32,000 with all 3 lifelines intact.  In the syndicated show, you're lucky to make it to $32K at all.

Which makes sense-- the daily show just doesn't have the same kind of budget to give away money that the prime time show had.  So they rejiggered their writing to make it harder to advance up the ladder.

Since I was in the contestant pool, I watched syndie Millionaire very diligently in the first season and it was immediately obvious that they'd ramped up the difficulty.  Perhaps the contestant selection process is less rigorous as well, but that's not the primary reason why people use lifelines earlier and don't get as far.

That said, I vastly preferred the phone game because it made me as a viewer much more emotionally connected to the show.  The phone game was a meritocracy.  I, like anyone else, could earn my way into the hotseat.  The exposed nature of the contestant selection process made it a people's show.

[leszekp]

Having taken both the J! qualification quiz, and the Millionaire quiz, I can say that the J! quiz is definitely tougher, for two reasons:

1. Millionaire is multiple choice, J! is fill in the blanks;

2. Virtually all of the Millionaire quiz questions are $32K and less questions taken from previous shows. If you've been a regular viewer of the show, you will have been exposed to all the answers at some point. This would make passing the quiz a lot easier, but doesn't necessarily indicate whether you'd be any good at answering actual questions on the show where you haven't seen the answer before.

As far as the point that Millionaire is tougher because one wrong answer and you're out, I have to disagree. First, it's multiple choice, so the right answer is in front of you. Second, you don't have two other people trying to buzz in ahead of you, so time isn't a factor. Third, you have the option to walk away with the money you've won and not answer the question. Fourth, if you hit a plateau, you're guaranteed at least that much money, which gives you a safety net for guessing the $2K and $64K questions. And finally, you do have lifelines, so you're not without help.

Millionaire's producers may well have decided to trade off contestant skill for their TVQ value. It's not clear to me that the two are mutually exclusive (see the ratings for the initial runs of Millionaire for proof of that), but it's their judgement call to make, as much as I might disagree with it.

[goongas]

First off, from reading Steve, I don't think the $320K is a Plateau in this version. You miss on Tier III, and you go home with $10K. There goes all the guessing.

Using Steve as a defense as anything does not hold up here.  If Steve told some of the members of this board that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, they wouldn't believe him.

I disagree with Steve's interpretation, as I think he is misinterpreting the N.Y. Times Article (the link I posted at the beginning of this thread).  The writer said something about the second level would trigger more lifelines, etc, and something to the effect of a question missed in the second level would drop you down to the first level winnings.  I don't think the writer was talking about the tiers of questions, but levels of the game in the sense of the there being two levels, level one having three lifelines, level two adding three more.

We will find out in due time if I am right or not.

[Peter Sarrett]

[quote name=\'leszekp\' date=\'Jan 27 2004, 08:17 PM\'] As far as the point that Millionaire is tougher because one wrong answer and you're out, I have to disagree. [/quote]
 I didn't say Millionaire was tougher, I said it was less forgiving.  If I'm a Jeopardy contestant, I'll ring in and go out on a limb with a guess far more readily than as a Millionaire contestant, because the penalty in Jeopardy is far, far less severe.  If Jeopardy contestants were knocked out of the game for incorrect answers, I think players would be much more hesitant about ringing in.

The severity of the penalty on Millionaire is why you don't see many contestants climb higher.  Their confidence in an answer might be sufficient for a Jeopardy guess, but not for a Millionaire guess.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Peter Sarrett\' date=\'Jan 27 2004, 09:11 PM\'] Not to sound like a broken record, but... the questions are harder.  
.......

 Perhaps the contestant selection process is less rigorous as well, but that's not the primary reason why people use lifelines earlier and don't get as far. [/quote]
 I think we see each other's basic points, but my perception is a bit different than yours, so my broken record skips in a different place.  

I absolutely agree than the questions are harder.  But when Hot Seaters are asking the audience on questions that consistantly get 90+% success rates, I have to point to the people in the Seat.  That plus my own observations over time of other questions Hot Seaters need help with leaves me thinking that the quality of the contestants (which is to say the lack thereof) is a bigger issue than you're making it out to be.

WHY that's the case could be any number of reasons, and may have nothing at all to do with "phone game" vs. "no phone game".  But I think it's every bit as important a factor, and in my mind maybe even more so, than the harder questions.