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austin_dern) wrote2005-07-02 06:59 pm
Casey would waltz with a strawberry blonde
I don't have any idea why, but outside the Borders book store was a children's orchestra, which between the rows of performers and reasonably appreciative audience took up most of the room outside the book store almost to the corner. I can't tell you who they were or why they were playing, since every time the conductor got to announcing who they were, he turned around, so that he was solemnly informing the orchestra who they were.
Hey, 21 years ago today, it was the debut of the crossword game you've played all your life, but never quite like this ... Chuck Woolery in Scrabble. I was really into it, during the summers anyway. The fact they kept track of the fastest contestants in the bonus round gave me the first chance to see a form of evolution in action. The earliest contestants I remembered taking on the order of 45 seconds for the win; that got squeezed down to an average of 20 seconds as people learned how to play efficiently. I think someone once managed to get it in 13 seconds.
Strategy on Card Sharks never took anyone time to figure out. The Price is Right depends, outside the Clock Game, mostly on having a good sense of how much cans of tuna fish and new cars cost. The regular games in The $25/50/100,000 Pyramid had gotten to where almost every match ended up with a score of 21-20 before I started following the show. So this was the first time I saw that progression of skill.
Trivia: In May 1941 NBC set the advertising rate at WNBT, its New York City station, at US$120 for an hour of prime-time programming. Source: Please Stand By: A Prehistory of Television, Michael Ritchie.
Currently Reading: The Investigation, Stanislaw Lem.
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I enjoyed Beat The Geeks before the change in hosts, from Vaguely Daily Show Guy to Vaguely Andy Dick Guy. Same game, new host, unwatchable.
Exactly so on Wheel of Fortune. Playing to finish up the board.. but of course, lose a turn and Bankrupt can hit you.. so there's a pressure that builds there. Wheel of Fortune does have just enough of a chance element that way, I'd say.
--Chiaroscuro
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Yeah, the strategy of continuing to call letters once you've solved the puzzle is mostly a test of nerves and how closely you believe the Gambler's Fallacy (there hasn't been a Bankrupt in too many spins, I'm due). But that's part of where the fascination lies; when does the chance of losing -- and, if you've been picking off letters, giving the board to your opponent -- overcome your sense of the reward?
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I remember how mind-boggling it was on the very rare occasions they got to do four wheel spinning rounds in that era. That, and puzzles were simple. People, person, place, thing. No 'Before and after', 'Famous quotations from mechanized warfare' and 'Anagrams you can try at home'. It was simple, and it worked.
Besides, wasn't it fun to watch a contestant who had $228 left in their winnings 'account', who groaned and was forced to buy the hideous abstract painting of a dalmation which just happened to cost $197, rather than take the whole thing on Gift Certificate?
I haven't got the Scrabble sounds anywhere, but somewhere or another I've got one of the original 'shopping' pieces of music for Wheel of Fortune. Ask me about it sometime.
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Wheel of Fortune was so much better when they had the buying of merchandise, as well as the categories that made actual sense. The classic days when you got three rounds, maybe four if they're quick, contestants turning around for the commercial break in the middle of a round, and contestants carried over are joys modern audiences probably won't understand. I remember the excitement one day when they got into a fifth round.
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Ah the days of merchandisers giving their stuff away as opposed to having a dollar value.
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You know, I wonder, how much did stores like Benjamin Franklin or Two Guys rely on game show promotion to keep themselves afloat ... I mean, you can't get the sort of warm, loving feeling Johnny Olson's readings would give to products these days.
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I think that Wheel of Fortune changed appropriately in eliminating the buying rounds, to give contestants more money instead of dressers and ceramic dalmatians. While it's hard to feel sorry for anyone who's winning prizes, even goofy ones.. it did make the show better for contestants.
Categories, though, seem.. odd lately. I think they've just run out of persons, places, things, and phrases and have to get convoluted.
--G.R.R.
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Well, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire revitalized the head-to-head quiz show genre; that's a different sort of game show to Wheel of Fortune, but it's not so far off of Jeopardy! -- but at a much more relaxed and personal pace, too. At least Millionaire proved that people do still want to see game shows; it's a pity the signs of regrowth in the field got mutated into ``reality'' shows.
But it was fun in Wheel of Fortune seeing people forced to do something with their remaining bits of prize money, even if it was forced to go to something ridiculous like the dalmatians. I seem to recall for a while it being allowed to put the remaining cash from one round ``on account,'' to be carried forward to the next, at risk of being lost to bankruptcy or a never-won following round. I don't know if that could be done with any amount or if it could only be what would otherwise go on a gift certificate.