Your Local State Lottery Shows...

[TimK2003]

About 2 weeks ago I caught the tail end of the "Ohio Lottery Cash Explosion" show.   There have been many times when I thought the show "Jumped The Shark" (i.e. when Paul Tapie and Sharon Bicknell were fired for the current "Up With People" rejects,...).

However, with all the recent promotion of a new Lotto game called "Lotto Play" (pretty much a Bingo game using 100 #s), the people at the lottery thought it would be a neat idea to invite everyone in the audience to come down at the end of the show to do the Lotto Play Dance with the lottery's Lotto Play 'song' at the end of the show.  

This had been the worst game show idea I have seen yet!  I am now afraid to watch Cash Explosion, let alone play the Cash Explosion instants.  I swear it's gotta be one of Governor Bob "14% approval rating" Taft's lamebrain ideas.  

Anyone else see this atrocity, and are they turning this into a weekly tradition???  TTD'90 is starting to look as good as Jeopardy! now after watching this....this.....THING!  Hell, Cash Explosion has made Alex Trebek's "Pitfall Dance" look like an Oscar-winning Gene Kelly number.


And while on the subject of shows going off the deep end, have/had your local State Lottery shows jumped the shark yet?  Or have they done things that make Patrick Wayne's antics look as good as Gene Rayburn's?

[That Don Guy]

California's Lotto show very nearly jumped the shark on its first night.  There were plans to make it a 30-minute "variety show" complete with "Lotto dancers", who did appear on the only 30-minute episode, but fortunately cooler heads prevailed and subsequent shows were 2 minutes each that aired between a station's 7:30 and 8:00 programs.

(And while not quite as "entertaining" as that, the Big Spin show probably jumped the shark when the lottery announced there were "more chances to win $1 million" - by removing just about all of the $3 million spaces and replacing some of them with $1 million ones.  Yes, a spinner was more likely to win $1 million, but less likely to win at least $1 million.  It's probably more accurate to say that it jumped the shark when the first Lotto tickets were made available, as that's what everybody had in mind when they voted for a state lottery in the first place.)

-- Don

[Matt Ottinger]

grumble grumble grumble

Once again, fans, "jumped the shark" is not the same thing as "did something I thought was stupid".  If you use a phrase like, "There have been many times when I thought the show Jumped The Shark", then you don't understand the concept.