I wonder how Gene handled the format because it would need someone like him to give it personality.
Grumpily. He handled it grumpily.
I haven't watched it in a while so this is all paraphrased from memory, but...The contestants don't ring in right away at the start of the game, and Gene mutters "Well, this game's off to a great start." At one point when the contestants don't ring in after a second hint at the correct answer, Gene snaps, "I had this solved 45 minutes ago!"
A few years back, I talked to someone who worked on this pilot and asked him, "What do you remember about the It pilot?" And his ONLY memory of it was "Gene Rayburn was in a horrible mood the whole time."
Two other things worth noting about the pilot--contestants are gradually eliminated during the game and when a contestant is eliminated, their podium sinks down and becomes part of the floor. But they don't deactivate the lockout button after they do this effect, so when Gene takes a step in the wrong direction, he sets off a buzzer. And they left that in the final cut of the pilot.
Also, they make a bizarre editing choice. At one point, Gene announces the wrong score for a player, and they had Gene loop in the correct score in post production. The way they splice it is Gene says "Your score is 200 points
[edit] I mean, 250 points." They could have easily just had Gene say "You have 250 points" but instead they specifically edited it to have Gene announce that he said the wrong score.
