Game show fever a pandemic

By JAMES BREIG- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

What are we to make of Game Show Fever?

There's no doubt everyone's got it. My wife Mary and I watch ABC's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" every time it's on, guessing at answers. During commercials, I phone our son Jim to comment on a contestant's failure to know what Will Rogers said or where the iris is.

With less regularity, he and I watch "Greed" on Fox, a show so complicated that contestants need a Talmudic scholar just to know where to stand -- on the left or right? -- during a challenge.

Too much too soon

They also have to recall things like the names of female characters from James Bond movies. Retaining such useless information can put a few hundred thousand greenbacks in your wallet. That's the problem: The prize money escalates too quickly. Rewarded prematurely, the "Greed" teams invariably retire from the fray rather than risk what they have won to try for the top prize.

NBC's "Twenty-One" learned that lesson and took the unusual step of reducing its prize money. This show resurrects the isolation booths from the bad old days of quiz shows in the 1950s. That's when the questions were tough but the answers came easy because they were given to the contestants beforehand.

What I love about "Twenty-One" is that it has a live band playing the heartbeat music that is common on game shows. Seated like wax figures in a balcony and sawing away rhythmically, they look a lot like Ernie Kovacs' Nairobi Trio -- but you have to remember more of the 1950s to know what I'm talking about.

Watch this space

CBS's brief foray into the game show craze was hosted by Dick Clark and called "Winning Lines," a title which had absolutely nothing to do with the show. It wasn't tough to play along -- unless your cranium is taxed by this: "If you take the number of days in the week and multiply by two, what do you get?"

In the bizarre final round, the winner was strapped into a dentist's chair while staring at a movable wall filled with floating answers. The only thing I could think of was the brainwashing scene from "Clockwork Orange." The show was mercy-killed after only a few airings.

The big kahuna of the bunch, of course, is "Millionaire," which gives away millions but which also takes in millions; in fact, more than one-fourth of its hour is gobbled up by advertising. The show, widely credited with saving ABC's bacon, routinely occupies half of the top-ten ratings slots.

Rex Regis

Regis Philbin, the king of "Millionaire," credits some of its success to its being a show families can watch together, with little children able to answer the first four or five questions. There's something to that, as witness my own family. But I also suspect that people of all ages indulge in the guilty pleasure of seeing chagrined contestants slink away after not knowing what Little Jack Horner pulled out of his pie.

Which indicates again that some of the questions are a little less than brain-teasing. But they do increase in difficulty as the man in the hot seat (it has rarely been a woman) advances, question by question, toward the mil'.

Those who salute the host for the success of this show are partially right. Maury Povich of "Twenty-One" seems unsure of his duties, while Chuck Woolery on "Greed" keeps the rules in front of him at all times because even he is confused by them.

But Regis remains Regis, sometimes avuncular, sometimes getting testy in his friendly way. (By the way, he should invite back the man who answered correctly about Teddy Roosevelt and JFK but who was called wrong. You know who I mean, Regis; give him another chance.)

Game show producers should note the success formula: Keep the game simple and put someone likable in charge. But making the questions a little more difficult wouldn't be such a bad idea.

(03-23-00)

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