Another Password revival pitch....

[Kevin Prather]

First of all, forgive me if a similar pitch has been made before. I don't recall it.

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Name: The Password Hour

Gameplay:

Round 1: The Password Round

This is played like classic Ludden Password minus the lightning rounds. When a team reaches 25 points, that game ends, and the civilian of that team wins $1,000. The round contains as many games as time permits. The round should be about 15 minutes. The round cannot end in mid-game. The person in the lead goes first in the next round.

Round 2: Password Plus

This is played like Password Plus. Five words that fit into a puzzle. The team that gets the word gets a free guess at the puzzle. Each successful puzzle-solve is worth $2,500. This round also cannot end in mid-game. The roumd also runs approximately 15 minutes. The team in the lead goes first in round three.

Round three: Cashword

The person in the lead going into round 3 goes first, and gets three clues to get the word. If they do it, they get $500, and they get to play the next word. If not, no money, and the other team gets the next word. This is a five-minute round. As many cashwords as possible. The team in the lead at the end of Cashword wins the game, and plays Alphabetics.


Bonus Round: Alphabetics

The winning team gets sixty seconds to get ten words beginning with letters A-J. If they do it, they win $25,000. If not, they get $500 for each word, paying off a maximum $4,500.

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So is this any good? Feedback please.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'whoserman\' date=\'Feb 19 2004, 01:10 PM\'] This is played like classic Ludden Password minus the lightning rounds. [/quote]
 Classic Ludden Password was interesting. In 1963. THIS is the hook you are going to grab viewers with in the first fifteen minutes? I don't have to tell you what that clicking sound is, you've heard it plenty of times with other proposals.

Round 2: Password Plus

This is played like Password Plus. Five words that fit into a puzzle. The team that gets the word gets a free guess at the puzzle. Each successful puzzle-solve is worth $2,500.

Wow is that too much money.

The Cashword round is remotely sensible, but there is nothing to make it remotely interesting.

$4,500 for LOSING an endgame? I should lose more often.

Also, a couple times I saw the line "This game cannot end in mid-round." And you're talking about rounds that can easily run 5 or 10 minutes. Which means your show can run anywhere from 15 minutes light to heavy. This is not even CLOSE to timing itself out correctly.

Q. What do you call a show that doesn't consistently fit in time constraints?

A. Cancelled.

So is this any good? Feedback please.

Nope. You asked.

[Kevin Prather]

Okay, thank you, Chris. I'll work on it some more.

[DrBear]

Sometimes, I just like to watch Chris yell PULL! then blast a proposal to smithereens like a skeet shooter...

What's weird is that I came up with something similar back in the atgs days... quoting from 2000:

FORMAT: Mostly a quickened-up version of 1960s-70s Password, with the "Alphabetics/Super Password" 10-word finale in for the big bucks at the end. It may be "classic" in the same style as "Classic Concentration" but it's close enough. It does eliminate the puzzle, but that frees up the choice of words; watching the 1960s version on GSN, it impresses me how much more difficult the words were.

HOST/CELEBS: You got me there. Any suggestions? Two I'd like to see, tho: Ben Stein and David Hyde-Pierce.

INTRO: (clever writing can provide new words for the celebs and contestants)
Celeb 1: "GAME"
Contest 1: "PLAY"
Celeb 2: "WORD"
Contest 2: "PUZZLE:"
Host: "CLASSIC......"
Audience (in the same style as introducing Groucho Marx on You Bet Your Life: "PASSWORD!"
Announcer:It's Classic Password with this week's stars, Sally Starlet and Larry Leadingman. And here's your host, Allen
Ludden Jr.! (hey, it's a thought even if there isn't one)

GAME PLAY: Celebs and contestants play original password with six points for the first clue, five for the second. The cutback from 10, 9.... is to stop un-gettable words after three clues each. First one to 15 wins.

LIGHTNING ROUND: Brought back from the original, this decides the money for the game just won. Five words, 60 seconds,
$100 a word, here's the first word, GO!. And after the game, the contestants switch partners.
I'm estimating four games per show, with an interrrupted game worth $10 a point. Player with the most money wins. (At four games a night, a good player could end up with more than $2,000 going into....

ALPHABETICS: I have two ideas here. One is $100 a word with a $10K prize for a sweep; the other is to make each word worth whatever the player won in the game, with a little extra thrown in for a sweep; a player who wins $1,500 in the regular game would play for that much per word in Alphabetics, with a bonus for all 10 boosting it to $20K. (If a player went over $2,000 in the regular game, the bonus would go to $25K.)
One difference: this would be played at the desk, not at a separate area  because of the ...

SET: The classic 60s-70s large desk, with a couple of changes:
1. A display strip (think the Times Square news "zipper") behind the contestants,  which would show:
a. How much a contestant has won during the regular game (it would move to the other side when the contestant moves)
b. Count up the total won in each Lightning Round.
c. Display the letters during Alphabetics. HIJKLMONPQ or whatever.
d. Diisplay the word "Password" when not doing any of the above.

2. A monitor for the Lightning Round/Alphabetics clue-giver which would pop up at those times. Words during the regular game would be handed out by the host as per the usual.

(By the way, this got no response at all, except for somebody who thought Password was boring and it was time for a Concentration revival. And no, it wasn't Chris. I think.)

[calliaume]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Feb 19 2004, 05:03 PM\'] What's weird is that I came up with something similar back in the atgs days... quoting from 2000
 [/quote]
 I can beat that -- the proposal on my Password All-Stars/Password page was first posted in late 1997.

Actually, nowadays I'd probably go with the proposal made here last month, which is a much simpler game to play.

[Tony]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Feb 19 2004, 03:58 PM\']Q. What do you call a show that doesn't consistently fit in time constraints?

A. Cancelled.[/quote]
Alternate answer: an NBC show

[Jimmy Owen]

Speed is of the essence with "The $1,000,000 Password."  Using the front game of "Password All-Stars," twelve players compete in a race to get seven passwords.  For each correct password, a player would get a "0." First player to get 6 zeros and a 1 (seven passwords) would win one million dollars.  If, however, time runs out before anyone gets seven passwords, John Harlan will have some lovely parting gifts, making for a fast-paced, fun prime time half-hour.

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Feb 19 2004, 05:03 PM\'] ALPHABETICS: I have two ideas here. One is $100 a word with a $10K prize for a sweep; the other is to make each word worth whatever the player won in the game, with a little extra thrown in for a sweep; a player who wins $1,500 in the regular game would play for that much per word in Alphabetics, with a bonus for all 10 boosting it to $20K. [/quote]
To make certain I'm understanding your proposal correctly, should I emerge as champion with $1500 and get only seven words correct in Alphabetics, I still get $10500? The producer might not go for it, but get me on this show!

[Jay Temple]

A middle ground might work:  For a sweep, your main-game winnings are multiplied by ten;  otherwise, $200 a word.  ($100 a word means that a miss is worth less than the game itself.)

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'whoserman\' date=\'Feb 19 2004, 03:10 PM\'] First of all, forgive me if a similar pitch has been made before. I don't recall it.
So is this any good? Feedback please. [/quote]
Thumbs down.
Confusing format; and why the varying money amounts?
You go from $1000 to $2500 to *$500* in round 3.

And playing Cashword for 5 minutes would easily put me to sleep.