Contestants winning money and other fabulous prizes make for great television, and indeed TV is full of opportunities for you to get rich: the most famous was Who Wants to be a Millionaire? which became uber-popular, and then by over-saturating the market with the same show, it died and is now just a syndicated show. So what TV game shows (from American networks) are worth watching?
1 vs. 100 (NBC)
Hosted by Bob Saget (of America’s Funniest Home Videos fame), this is one of the new game shows on NBC. I say new, but it’s not really new since it’s a variation of E�n Tegen Honderd, a Dutch show. The premise is simple: you play the game against 100 other people who are the mob. You must answer correctly a series of trivia questios and at each round, members of the mob who answer incorrectly get eliminated, and your goal is to eliminate all 100 members of the mob in order to win $1 million. At any point if the contestant answers wrong, his/her winnings will be split by the remaining members of the mob… Personally I enjoy the show but the questions are ridiculously easy or absurdly hard: what pains me is some members of the mob get even easiest questions wrong. Of course producers invite famous (and semi-famous) people to be in the mob - such as Fabio, the guy who was the inspiration for The 40 Year Old Virgin, Adam West…
If you want to try for yourself, there’s an online interactive game here (free registration required).
Deal or No Deal (NBC)
This gotta be the easiest game show, and hardest show to win money, because it’s all left to chance. Hosted by Howie Mandel (a fellow Canadian!), contestant must choose 1 case out of 26 which becomes his/her winning. Then at each round, the contestant picks a bunch of cases and eliminates them from the game. Smallest amount in the cases is 1 cent, and the largest is $1 million so the point of the goal is to… pick the case containing $1 million at the beginning. Since it’s 1 out of 26, there’s a good chance to win that amount, except once you pick it, there’s no chance to change it (until the very end where there’s only 1 another case left). At the end of each round, the banker gives a call and offers a deal for the contestant to end the game, and he/she has to choose whether to take the deal or continue hoping a large amount is in the case he/she holds. The show isn’t too exciting because there’s no possible participation: with trivia questions, at least you could try to answer them, but here all you do is watch someone pick a bunch of numbers.
The Price is Right (CBS)
The grandaddy of all game shows, this is the longest running 5-days-a-week game show in the world, and it still remains one of the most exciting thing on day-time TV. Randomly members of the audience are chosen and come down to the contestants’ row. Then they bid on a random product and the closest bid without going over gets to go up to the main stage and play one of the many pricing games: it can be anything from furniture to brand new cars. Once 3 contestants play their games, they spin the big wheel and they must get close to $1.00 without going over with 2 spins… if you get $1.00 then you win extra cash. 2 winners of the spin-off battle for the Showcases which contain fabulous prizes. It sounds complicated but it’s very exciting - especially since the audience is incredibly excited and loud - and watching people try to guess retail prices is priceless. Bob Barker has hosted the show for 34 years and it’ll be hard to imagine the show without him (so we’ll see what’ll happen in June this year)
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