Power of Ten

By | October 18, 2011

Well tonight at 8pm is the second episode of High Stakes with Jeremy Kyle (or if you prefer it’s the final episode of Minute To Win It on ITV2), but HS certainly isn’t the first show to offer gambles that nobody is ever going to take, but probably the biggest example of this was CBS’ worldwide non-hit (pulled after two episodes in several countries) The Power of 10 with Drew Carey. TPoT is a state-of-the-nation predicting game, and after battling an opponent over a number of questions you start earning money, multiplying by “the power of ten” (they do in fact just mean “ten”) each time you are right up to a whopping $10m.

I’ve always been of the opinion that offering gambles nobody in their right mind is going to take is poor formatting.

Speaking of things which might not work, Celebrity The Chase begins 6pm on Saturday 29th October.

17 thoughts on “Power of Ten

  1. CeleTheRef

    at a press release, Gerry Scotti has revealed that the upcoming primetime run of the Italian Money Drop might NOT go on the air, but in that case they will still post the full episodes on the Mediaset website (and usually they don’t region block their videos)

    he also announced that he’ll host Wheel Of Fortune next Summer.

    Reply
  2. David Howell

    What makes this a highlight of bad formatting is that Drew is remarkably overt in encouraging Jamie to take a gamble nobody in their right mind is ever going to take. A significant minority of the YouTube comments for this video criticise him for this.

    Reply
    1. Chris

      Though isn’t a host’s job in a show like this to play devils advocate?

      Reply
      1. David Howell

        Arguably yes. However, when that means being this forceful and one-sided, it’s probably because the gamble is itself horribly miscalibrated.

        Reply
      2. Gizensha

        I’d argue that the host should provide balance to the decision – Offer the other perspective, or both if the contestant is umming and arring over both. Not to try and sway the contestant, but to give the other perspective to the viewer and/or prompt the contestant to explain the reasoning, or to explain the reason for the difficulty int he decision in a way that doesn’t look like exposition.

        Obviously, this only applies in a single player, decision making based, show.

        Reply
      1. Mart with an Y not an I

        Given how they’ve cut to the jib to hide a cluncky edit – I did wonder when I was watching it, just how long that laughter lasted during recording..

        Good of ITV to show us that in the actual show.
        I notice there are another two It’ll Be Alright On The Night’s heading our way (recording early Nov) so they could have kept it back for one of those.

        Reply
  3. Gizensha

    Surely it should be called Chase The Celebrities? Because that’s more amusing in the same way that Pointless Celebrities was.

    Reply
    1. Gizensha

      Insert a colon in there if you care about the title actually making sense in context, mind…

      Reply
  4. Joe

    Hmmm…. what is going on with The Chasers this series. And I’m talking about the old Chasers not the new one. The Governess didn’t know what Ethanol was? An easy school question every knows! Standards have dropped.

    Reply
    1. Des Elmes

      Well, Shaun in particular has had quite a few shocking performances.

      Fancy not even getting halfway to a target of 20 – or reaching one of 16 with just two seconds left… 😯

      Reply
      1. Joe

        Shaun needs to up his game and get back down to revising his information. Otherwise, the producers might not feel he’s up to it anymore.

        Reply
  5. Brekkie

    Looks like The Chase then will be random celebrity teams ala Millionaire duos, probably playing for separate charities, rather than teams. It would have actually made the celeb version more interesting to have a team of four working to win cash for one charity each week just to change the usual dynamic of it being everyone for themselves.

    Reply

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