OK! Finally got round to watching the first episode of Million Second Quiz. As a live hour of television I thought it worked pretty well – Seacrest is a brilliant live host, the show felt fairly pacey – considering the quiz segment took up 1000 seconds of the hour (that’s just under 17 minutes, maths fans) I don’t think it dragged particularly, the filler felt relevant. The quiz bouts are fine – multiple choice questions, five seconds to answer, point values and question difficulties increase as the bout progresses, players have the option of forcing their opponent to answer to double the points which they can redouble back which adds a layer of bluff and strategy. There should be more questions ideally, it takes about 25-30 seconds to go through each one. These primetime bouts work slightly differently to the other ones played for the rest of the quiz, but that’s fine because you should make the TV broadcast a bit more special. And there is a sense of progression throughout the show so it builds up to a main match of the night, which is fine. It doesn’t explain itself very well but it’s for young people, so that’s fine.
So as a quiz it’s fine. But it’s not just a quiz, it’s a genre-redefining television event and here it falls down pretty comprehensively because they’ve made it very difficult to really care about the result – the streaming service refuses to show any streams of any of the actual off-primetime quiz bouts (the show’s big USP) instead serving up the Subway bar (when I tuned in earlier) (not a USP) or Winner’s Row (where you can watch people who you’ve seen for about twenty seconds on television and thus don’t really care about really). A genre-redefining thing is happening, we’re not going to let you in on it. The playalong app by the sounds of it doesn’t actually work, so that’s that sketch knackered then. As a contestant you can go and play but the challenge becomes increasingly daunting just to make the money. And anyway why should you care as a viewer? You’re not getting much in the way of journey, you’re getting an hour window each night of some people standing behind podiums pushing buttons. The TV show does a reasonable job of being a TV show (which is its primary purpose) but as a means of selling the event it’s not great at letting you buy into it.
But that’s not why we’re here, BIG THINGS were expected of Million Second Quiz (I keep wanting to write Million Dollar Quiz but never mind) and the hope and expectation is that the show would do well because it might kickstart other exciting event type shows, possibly or possibly not featuring television’s equivalent to the emperor’s new clothes SOCIAL MEDIA.
We were expecting this feature-ette to run and run, but I’m afraid after three nights the public have drowned Ryan Seacrest. Drowned him in sand.
To that end we have the Ryan Seacrest Demographic Rating Hourglass (TM). Unfortunately for Ryan, he’s found himself trapped in the bottom bulb of an hourglass. In the top bulb sand (people). We believe the viewers will start off high and dwindle and thus as the people (sand) falls, poor Ryan who is held in place by the Weight Of Expectation (TM) gets covered by sand (people) there is a real chance that he will asphyxiate, and as he does so the chance of the show getting picked up domestically or internationally unless it’s by a broadcaster with no real sense.
US TV is all about the 18-49 demographic. Last week in the timeslot American Ninja Warrior managed a 1.8/5 – which means 1.8% of households with 18-49 year old people in watched it, and 5% of the TV audience at the time.
I reckon to start with anything like a bang for the effort involved it would need at least a 2.0. It was up against a repeat of Shark Tank (Dragon’s Den) which according to TV By The Numbers got a 1.5.
It got a non-genre-redefining 1.7, apparently dropping to 1.6 after half an hour. And already we can see Seacrest is almost up to his neck in sand (people). We reckon it will be up to his mouth at 1.4. We will look upon the hourglass further as the event continues. Will Seacrest survive, or will he suffer a FATE WORSE THAN DEATH? The Million Second Quiz continues tonight.
Incidentally, we’re getting lots of hits for “do the losers take the money home on Million Dollar Quiz?” The answer is no, only the people in winner’s row and the person in the chair when the million seconds are up get to bank their cash and playoff for a $2m bonus.
Update: Oh dear, it’s not looking good for the genre-redefining phenomenon Ryan Seacrest, just a 1.5/5 on night two. We might be done with this feature-ette tomorrow. The sand (people) seems to have corroded some of the hourglass, look.
Update 2: Up against The X Factor (which itself is well down on last year) and Big Brother it got 1.2 on night three. What we have learnt is that MSQ has not redefined a genre, or perhaps it has redefined a different genre.
