Syndie ratings

[The Ol' Guy]

and I'm with you on that. Like I say - if they had started where it is now and stayed on that track, you wouldn't feel like the show is hurting. I just hope it doesn't make too many viewers feel like their $1 weekly allowance was cut to 50 cents, making them think, "then who cares?" Perhaps King World should keep focusing their promotion more on the comedy than the prizes or even the game. Squares has never really been about the money...

[MSTieScott]

My hope is that the decreased prizes means that Squares is less expensive to produce this year, making it slightly more likely that it'll see another season. Of course, my hope could be completely unfounded, since the prize budget isn't a game show's biggest expense and it still needs to have decent ratings, but maybe...?

--
Scott Robinson

[bttritle]

I'm less concerned about the prize budget, and more concerned about the talent budget.  I've heard that it's next to nothing.  Almost seems like if it does manage to survive for another year, Viacom may try to combine the prize and talent budgets to save even more money.

Ben T.

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'bttritle\' date=\'Oct 22 2003, 03:20 PM\']I'm less concerned about the prize budget, and more concerned about the talent budget.  I've heard that it's next to nothing.  Almost seems like if it does manage to survive for another year, Viacom may try to combine the prize and talent budgets to save even more money.[/quote]
Weren't they paying them scale anyway, outside of the regulars (or regular, since Martin Mull seemed to be the only one this year and last year) and center squares?

They may not be giving out the stocked gift baskets like they did back in the Whoopi days (and I noticed that for the "Pyramid" celeb gift baskets Sony has to run a plug for Crabtree & Evelyn in the credits, probably a first for a game show).  They may also be either going to a deli or sending people to the CBS commissary rather than having Wolfgang Puck or other chi-chi caterers doing the meal.