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.
A few names floating around for Celebrity 15-to-1: Jo Brand, Fern Britton, Alex Brooker, Dawn Harper, Eamonn Holmes, Konnie Huq, Stephen Mangan, Jonathan Ross.
Brand and Wossy are no suprise but I was predicting Dr. Christian or Gok Wan to show up; there are 7 slots left, I suppose.
http://www.argonon.com/news/frankie-says-watch-as-remedy-productions-and-channel-4-heads-back-to-the-80s-with-the-return-of-fifteen-to-one/
1.5/5 for night two, the hourglass will update in due course.
Episode 1 is up here, some of these links work better than others but your mileage may vary:
http://www.watchseries-online.eu/2013/09/the-million-second-quiz-s01e01.html
If you want to watch ep 3 live, tune in 1am our time on here:
http://www.stream2watch.me/live-tv/nbc-live-stream
I dunno, I rather liked it – and liked it rather more than I was expecting to. It has pace and excitement to the point where I reckon it probably feels rather distinctive. Looking forward to finding and watching future episodes. The quiz is on the surface rather plain and simple but there is something to it in the Double Dare stylee to make it a game worth thinking about. The questions were a cut above the norm, and I would say that even if seemingly most of the writers (, editors, stack compilers etc.) weren’t part of the US game show fandom.
I hope, the ratings will at least better until we see his face again, the show isn’t that bad… I like it and I am interested in the finale.
Down to a 1.1/4 yesterday.
I have no real issues with the live broadcast.
I wonder how the finale will work? I would presume some sort of ladder system.
I was thinking either ladder (a la ‘Number 1’) or seeding (1 vs 4, 2 vs 3, winner vs winner)
P.S. Change the graphic!
I fear there is nowhere left to take the joke, although have pointed out that if it finds a sudden uplift the hourglass would have to be turned over, which wouldn’t be very good for him.
The question how the finale works, is the reason why I am so interested. I think both possibilities proposed are unlikely, as I thought the 4 in Winners’ Row and the one in the money chair when the 1000000 seconds end will be playing the finale. Otherwise they could stop playing as soon as the fourth place couldn’t be beaten anyway… So I thought that would be a “normal” quiz whittling it down to 2 people with average rounds and then playing a long version of the show’s bouts. It would definitly be a reason, why the show didn’t reinvent the genre, if it was like that. Anyway, I hope they surprise me with the most genius end game ever.
I would suspect it’ll be done Number One or De Slimste Finals week style. That’d be the easiest way to get from five to one whilst keeping the bout system.
I’ve just noticed they’ve put up the Power Player periods on the site (midnight to three am, 6am to 9am, noon to three pm) – actually quite interesting and difficult:
http://www.nbc.com/million-second-quiz/#/live_from_nyc
I did wonder where the sleepless element promised before the show began would actually come in. They’re not obliged to play.
We have some more ratings; with the 18-49 demographic having fallen to 0.8/3 by Friday, the graphic would probably have to have negative sand in the top half in order to create sufficient sand for the bottom half 🙁
I really wasn’t expecting it to go below a 1.0. One thing I’ve discovered is that i’m quite good predicting roughly how well something will do, but lousy at predicting where they’ll bottom out.
It gets worse. Saturday got a 0.7.
1) I still think it’s a good show. Takes a little bit of finding (and link-clicking and popup-closing, despite the war of escalation between the advertisers and the ad-blockers) but worth the effort.
2) Extrapolating the trend, is the viewers-vs.-time line on the graph set to meet or even cross the axis before the last episode?
The Million Second Quiz-The XFL of game shows 😛
Actual drama tonight. Hayley says she wants to go into the Winner’s Defense and gets put in by Andrew as her wish.
Lead see-saws through the match but eventually claws a small lead as it gets to the final question, which is a fairly snarly maths one about tablespoons and cups and the like. Her opponent doubles it for a potentially game-winning 8 points.
She freezes and she doesn’t press in time!!! 8 points go to the newbie by default and he wins.
She certainly seemed to press a good half-second too late. However, it doesn’t look good as she insists several times that she pressed the right answer in time.
I think it was handled as fairly as possible. Hopefully they’ll do a piece on it at the start of tomorrow to prove that she was 0.35 seconds late (or whatever).
All said and done, I quite like the bout structure and think it’s a fun game. It’s a shame the launch of it has been so poorly handled. The main problem when getting to the sharp end of the week is that the money accruing in the first bout’s now unlikely to add up to a hill of beans – it’s more about who’s going to qualify for the Winner’s defence (unless the newbie happens to have $160,000 already racked up by the time we join the game).
Yes, there’s a big pulling the ladder up behind effect, because more money goes into Winner’s Row each night. As they might get a second bite of the cherry, as well as inheriting losers money, it gets much more difficult for a player outside of primetime to get in. Which is a shame.
I didn’t like the format of the finale, it seemed to simple to me and not innovative (which was the aim of the show) at all. However I like, that in fourth place there was a person, that didn’t live in New York. I think its not too great to give people from NY such a great advantage, so I’m glad about that one person…
OK, I was the viewer who stuck with it, and I thought it was really very good on the whole. It gets on my global Winner’s Row for the year, probably second behind only The Genius – and I was a much bigger fan of Five Minutes To A Fortune than most. Three exciting new formats anywhere around the world in a single year and it’s a good enough year as far as I’m concerned, no matter how much rubbish we have to wade through as well, near enough.
Granted, I’m a sucker for a high concept, and the concept of a 24 hour quiz is pretty high as they go. This had a feeling of authenticity and excitement. The prime time hours were very nicely paced and came to a natural crescendo. I thought the question-writing was a cut above the average for a four-option multiple-choice quiz – at the very least, loading the stacks up with so many current affairs questions lent a feel of vitality and currency to proceedings. (Full disclosure: quite a few of the staff are old-school online game show fandom members, mostly concentrated on the writing side of things, at least two of whom I have met and are my Facebook friends.)
The contestants were, by and large, very likeable. I enjoyed seeing the rapport and relationships built up among them in a way that I have pretty much stopped doing in most other constructed 24/7 reality shows, perhaps because I felt that I could relate to them in a way that I can’t in other cases. (This may not be the case for many of the audience…) It was clear how much the contestants’ fates meant to other members of Winners’ Row. While I’m not a fan of shows where contestants can end up worse off than they were before they played, either by deprivation or injury, it seems that I don’t have a problem with contestants turning out to have spent considerable chunks of time on endeavours that might turn out to be unsuccessful.
Part of the reason why I liked it so much was that there was rather more by the way of presumed-inadvertent game show fandom fan service than in most shows. There really were some neat storylines by way of contestant selection, even if many of them were not properly explored on screen and had to be conveyed second-hand by those who were following the 24/7 part of the proceedings. The conclusion of the final show totally counts as fan service, in a way very much to my taste.
I’ve not seen much Ryan Seacrest at all before, but I think he comes out as a net positive. He flubbed some pronunciations, which is much more of an issue on a live show than elsewhere, but it went to show how well he did the rest of the time. He also coped very manfully with contextually brilliant quick improvisation on one occasion where there was a technical flaw and a pre-taped VT was not rolled.
The music was great and I can’t imagine Icona Pop being nearly as appropriate on any show other than this. The graphics, presentation and set design at large all contributed to the event feel, which is not a sense that most shows can convey.
The actual game itself worked rather better in practice than the ingredients might suggest; the motif of increasing question base values over time is very Game Show 101, and most of the shows had questions at a rate of about 0.03 Hz, which is hardly top speed. Nevertheless, things picked up at the right points. The doubling decisions were genuinely interesting, even if much of the time the strategy was fairly clear. A redoubled question did assume as much significance as, say, the rare penalty kick in association football; this contributed to the sense of the game activity being a variant of quiz with the sport nature. This gave it plenty of credit in the authenticity department – they were shooting for something that felt like an annual sporting event, and they got it.
On the downside, it felt like rather a cheap show (at least, in the context of the final giveaway of the highest game show cash prize of all time, except not – see Dutch lottery Deal). I can understand the appeal of an aesthetic of having everyone not on the final Winners’ Row leaving with nothing (or, reportedly, a Subway $5 Subway gift Subway card, for Subway) and it certainly was a big inspiration of tension. However, exactly four winners over the course of a week seems a little… thin. It’s tempting to wonder if there is a reason for Winners’ Row being four strong, other than to have three duels in the last hour, much like every other hour. (Could five or six have been more interesting? Probably more fun; certainly more likely to give taking a spot towards the end of the week via the Chair itself rather than through the Winners’ “Defense”.)
Perhaps something could be done to make being in the Chair more rewarding for all those who do not end up taking cash away; a simple approach would be to pay players a guaranteed token – say – $50 per game, win or lose, even if they don’t actually announce it on-screen and keep going with the “nothing” motif. If nothing else, perhaps making Winners’ Row more of a destination in itself would be a simple way to make things feel less austere; suppose you’re there for seven days before leaving without a prize, then perhaps seven days of treats along the way would feel fitting even without any cash reward. If there’s no prospect of feeding the contestants anything not associated with the sponsor, then give them spa treatments, give them famous visitors, give them neat experiences, give them the celebrity treatment along the away. In my mind, I choose to believe (based on zero evidence) that at least two of the eventual cash winners cut “savers” – deals with some of their favourite other WR inhabitants who ended up not taking cash home, regardless of who ended up in the money at the end.
That’s only a small thing. The show picked up a reputation very quickly for being confusing, and certainly the first episode did not explain proceedings well. (If you had seen explanations online beforehand then it really is very easy, but the assumption must be that you won’t have done.) There was less distinctiveness between episodes than might have been desirable, too.