Close calls....narrow escapes.....

[Adam Nedeff]

That moment did get me to thinking. Has there been an instance where two people met because they were contestants on the same game show, hit it off, and eventually got married? Even if they weren't necessarily opponents but were simply in the contestant pool on the same taping day?

This doesn't totally answer your question, but I recall an episode of Classic Concentration on Buzzr; the contestants' names were Ross and Leslie. Alex starts the show by explaining that they've both been in the contestant pool for the last three tapings, the staff picked up on the fact that they seemed to be really hitting it off during the previous tapings, and Alex just totally outed them and revealed that they were a couple by the time they finally got a chance to play against each other. Cute moment. I'd love to think things worked out for them.

[KrisW73]

Was Monday's episode the first time we saw the new Long Shot block with the yellow wording? Much easier to read

[Bryce L.]

Was Monday's episode the first time we saw the new Long Shot block with the yellow wording? Much easier to read

Yes.

[KrisW73]

You can't hit three blocks and win...

Steve Leblang: "Hold my beer..."

[parliboy]

You can't hit three blocks and win...

Steve Leblang: "Hold my beer..."

You can hit three blocks and win.  You cannot miss three questions and win.  Longer questions means greater time penalties. 

[KrisW73]

You can't hit three blocks and win...

Steve Leblang: "Hold my beer..."

You can hit three blocks and win.  You cannot miss three questions and win.  Longer questions means greater time penalties. 

Good point - I stand corrected

[TLEberle]

You can hit three blocks and win.  You cannot miss three questions and win.  Longer questions means greater time penalties. 

Watching (well listening to) Whew! every day and here's my overview:

Whew is a game that punishes lapses in concentration, moreso than any game other than Concentration. If you reveal a block, use that time to get centered and be ready to come out with your next choice as soon as Tom says "Charge!" During the Gauntlet of Villains, treat each event as a chance to win another $100 and move a step forward. Too many players miss one and it throws them off their stroke and you get folks winning $400. For goodness sake, don't take five seconds of dead air so much so that Tom asks "Do you want to try another one on that level?"

Yes, the longshot tilts things in favor of the blocker. Yes, charging is an exercise in doublethink and randomness. It's still a game that when it plays well looks fantastic on TV, such as when the hyperkinetic Steven Leblang tore through the material.

That said I can see how it is not everybody's cup of tea.

[That Don Guy]

Watching (well listening to) Whew! every day and here's my overview:

Whew is a game that punishes lapses in concentration, moreso than any game other than Concentration. If you reveal a block, use that time to get centered and be ready to come out with your next choice as soon as Tom says "Charge!" During the Gauntlet of Villains, treat each event as a chance to win another $100 and move a step forward. Too many players miss one and it throws them off their stroke and you get folks winning $400. For goodness sake, don't take five seconds of dead air so much so that Tom asks "Do you want to try another one on that level?"

To be fair, I'm pretty sure the contestant got confused because she gave what she thought was the right answer (I think the blooper was "Leaning {wrong word} Pisa" and she said "Tower" instead of "Tower of") and wondered why she was still on the same level.

[Nick]

To be fair, I'm pretty sure the contestant got confused because she gave what she thought was the right answer (I think the blooper was "Leaning {wrong word} Pisa" and she said "Tower" instead of "Tower of") and wondered why she was still on the same level.

Yes, it was one of those cases where the blooper wasn't really well written.  They might as well have made "Tower of Pisa" the entire part replaced if they weren't going to do just "Tower".  I get they're not doing this to trip up contestants, but it kind of has that unintended effect.

I have also learned in watching this series the importance of your game show having a good timing director.  For a show that has been described around here in the past as being a "20-minute news gap filler" (and the pacing shows just how much window dressing has been put on, ultimately, a five-minute game), it disappoints me how in some shows Tom has to fill a minute(s) by getting down the list to questions such as, "How many grandchildren do you have?" and in others we're so short on time we get Rod saying, "This is Rod Roddy speaking. Whew! is a production of the Bud Austin Company. StaytunedforThePriceIsRightfollowingthenewsovermostoftheseCBS--".

[TimK2003]

I have also learned in watching this series the importance of your game show having a good timing director.  For a show that has been described around here in the past as being a "20-minute news gap filler" (and the pacing shows just how much window dressing has been put on, ultimately, a five-minute game), it disappoints me how in some shows Tom has to fill a minute(s) by getting down the list to questions such as, "How many grandchildren do you have?" and in others we're so short on time we get Rod saying, "This is Rod Roddy speaking. Whew! is a production of the Bud Austin Company. StaytunedforThePriceIsRightfollowingthenewsovermostoftheseCBS--".

There was one recent episode where Rod only had time to say "Whew...is a production of the Bud Austin Company"...no Stay tuned for....

[Nick]

There was one recent episode where Rod only had time to say "Whew...is a production of the Bud Austin Company"...no Stay tuned for....

Yeah, it surprises me how alarmingly bad they were at timing out the show sometimes.

And really, when you think about it, compared to other game shows where you can be caught in a hard place of "do we have time to squeeze in another round?" instead of two minutes of banter before the credits (e.g., Password Plus, Card Sharks, Chain Reaction), Whew! should have been a cinch for timing.  It was a timed game and was always a combination of three front rounds and a bonus round or two front rounds and two bonus rounds.  If there's no longshot call, you know that means you've wrapped up about 30 seconds early.  Stick a couple of added pieces of banter in before the bonus walk, and you should be all timed up by the end of the show, even if you still defer to the long roll.

/An especially enjoyable long roll with cool wide-angle shots against a cool closing theme.

[MikeK]

After the shows from the marathon in September air again ending on Thanksgiving Day, Friday jumps back to where the run started on Labor Day--show 78.  This means Randy's first show should rerun on the 10th of December, and his win should air on the 13th.  By weird coincidence, in between on the 12th is the 20th anniversary of his passing.  The 16th should be episode 92, a great episode which BUZZR mangled in its first airing.

[clemon79]

Here's an experiment that might be worth trying, that just occurred to me now as I'm processing these last few shows of this run...

So I think a lot of you know that since Comcast Seattle doesn't carry BUZZR natively, I'm recording these via some wizardry in NextPVR that basically lets me turn the streaming feed into Just Another Tunable Channel, and in order to integrate it into my guide I need to find a nice quiet channel number that Comcast isn't using (easy enough - can even be one I simply don't care about ) and then a Pacific-time feed of guide data that I can point NextPVR to so it knows how to populate the guide listings.

With a Schedules Direct subscription, there are plenty of options for the latter, and right now I'm pulling from Charter Spectrum out of LA. Thing is, the data for individual shows isn't spectacular; for example, it's been numbering the Whew! run as S01E01...S01E61, and then when I process them I have to rename them with the proper episode numbers.

So my question is: do we have anyone here who gets BUZZR through their cable system (do the DirectTVs and DISHs even carry it? If so I suppose they would qualify too, I think I can access those data feeds as well) on the West Coast who is getting good guide data with correct season and episode information? I think I got it ONCE at some point in a recording so I think BUZZR does provide it to some carriers. If so, where are you and who's your carrier so I can try pulling from that one and see if it's a quality of data thing or a NextPVR parsing thing? Thanks!

[That Don Guy]

So my question is: do we have anyone here who gets BUZZR through their cable system (do the DirectTVs and DISHs even carry it? If so I suppose they would qualify too, I think I can access those data feeds as well) on the West Coast who is getting good guide data with correct season and episode information? I think I got it ONCE at some point in a recording so I think BUZZR does provide it to some carriers. If so, where are you and who's your carrier so I can try pulling from that one and see if it's a quality of data thing or a NextPVR parsing thing? Thanks!

I get it through Xfinity - it's not directly from BUZZR, but from the local Fox affiliate that broadcasts it. It's Comcast Vallejo, CA channel 169. Note that some guide data distinguish the episodes correctly, while others (e.g. TiVo) do not.

[clemon79]

I get it through Xfinity - it's not directly from BUZZR, but from the local Fox affiliate that broadcasts it. It's Comcast Vallejo, CA channel 169. Note that some guide data distinguish the episodes correctly, while others (e.g. TiVo) do not.

And you have seen proper episode data from that? Plenty good enough for me; I'll give that a look. Thanks very much!

(KTVUDT4, yes? Comcast Benecia?)