This week’s excitement is that new event television show Million Second Quiz begins on NBC tomorrow night, and already there is a fair amount of international interest. The show is made by All3Media and Studio Lambert.
The problem is for something being classed as an genre-redefining event that begins tomorrow, everyone seems to have gone really quiet on it. I can’t judge how much advertising it’s had in the US, but certainly amongst my well-trusted US genre-fans, except for a brief period when the app came out, it’s a show literally nobody is talking about.
What we know is that people compete in a a quiz duel in an hourglass shaped set in New York City. One person gets to sit in the money chair and banks $10 a second he sits in it. When they’re defeated, if they’re one of the top four earning contestants they get to move into an apartment next door to the set. After 12 days, the top four people (and apparently the person in the chair at the end of the game) come back and keep the money they’ve earned and duel off to win a large amount of money – $2m is suggested on Wikipedia.
The USP is that anybody could potentially play – do well enough in the app and you’ll get fastracked through the audition process. So far, so Million Pound Drop.
Here for me is the rub – sure we’ve got Ryan Seacrest hosting the daily live show, and it’s that live show that’s going to matter when all’s said and done. But what is that show going to consist of? The fear is that highlights of a quiz are just going to be too abstract for people to tune in for and the very basic nature of a bout (it’s just a set of winner-stays-on multiple choice quizzes) means you’re probably not missing much if you opt not to tune in.
As it stands in my head it’s just not a show you need to tune in for. People will sample the first episode, they’ll watch the big money giveaway in the last one, I expect it will sag quite badly in between.
Quite a lot is riding on the anyone-can-have-a-go aspect which is one of the reasons behind Millionaire‘s success 15 years ago – you phone up, you could be in the studio the next day. But this is different from Millionaire in that it has a large endurance aspect – you are actually going to have to work quite hard for the money. My gut says if they can’t find a girl/guy next door type they can make look like a hero quite early on for the man on the street to root for then they are going to lose interest quickly.
This is a lot of assertion for a show which hasn’t actually aired yet, but so far there’s no real evidence that many of lessons after 24 Hour Quiz have been learned. I look forward to seeing how wrong/right I am with interest come tomorrow night.
Edit: Here is the website, hopefully live streaming will be up and running at some point, although possibly not outside the US.
I wish someone will stay there for the entire 1,000,000 seconds so that (s)he wins 12 million dollars and everyone would watch it to see whether the person will finally fail on day 3 or so, I like the idea! (I know, it is not the most likely thing to happen, but I hope it will kind of happen like this.)
Interestingly it sounds like they’re having issues getting the online live feed working – I don’t think more than about 5% of people who watch it on telly will dip in online, but the playalong element is definitely a plus.
Hope they get it sorted out for after show one tonight, otherwise they’ve got big problems. The game began yesterday.
My thinking on that was they were going to hold off until the first show aired (USBB has been doing that for years- putting the HG’s in about a week before the TV premiere so they have footage for the first couple of shows- starting the live feeds once the premiere finishes. It drives fans crazy because a lot of the early strategies and connections that are made in those first few days are missed.)
They’ve been advertising it A LOT actually. They’re promoting it like how they did with The Voice (i.e. TIE-INS. TIE-INS EVERYWHERE)
I’ve still not got round to watching this yet (when I get home in a few hours, hopefully), but the first episode got 1.7 in the demo, which I think has to go down as not as high as they’d like.
Watched the show and think its great – just needs to be in a studio. Far too windy. Gameplay is good and could easily transfer cross-country. Now I know why Apple released the new iPhone this week so at least 4 people can buy one at the end of the million seconds.
I quite liked the outside aspect, the wind made it feel more epic.