WWTBAM Bored

...and I think you will like it.

It was taped last week over at Disney Studios in Burbank. Unfortunately, I wasn't selected as a contestant.

However, I was very curious about the show, so I decided to enter the world of the Paid Audience Member as a personal sociological experiment. That part of the experience was quite fascinating and merits its own story.

From a taping perspective, there were all the problems one would expect with a brand new game show times about 10. I attended the first show last Wednesday, arriving at the 2 pm call time. We got out at 1 am, after taping only one 1 hour show.

I also attended last Friday's tapings, where I saw shows 4 and 5. That went slightly more smoothly - it took 11 hours with a 1 hour lunch break. Our call time was 9 am and we were out at 8 pm.

I wanted to attend the final show which was also taped last Friday, but the Duel powers that be decided to bring in a fresh audience. Understandable, but unfortunate for me. I wanted to see how it would end - now I have to wait until December 23 like everyone else.

The pace of taping was obviously excruciatingly slow at times, but I think the show will turn out quite well after editing. I think the game is much better than most of the recent game show offerings we've seen, but I'm also sure many of you will find aspects of the show that you don't like.

We were told repeatedly during the taping that "whatever happens at Duel stays at Duel", so for confidentiality reasons I don't want to say too much more about the game itself.

However, I know there's been some articles written about the game, and ABC does have a play-at-home online version in the works. If you ask me questions in the context of articles already written about the show, perhaps I can answer or at least confirm some things.

Are you ready? Let's Duel!

I don't care who wins or loses, but I was curious about the game play. Since even ABC's website says little about that, I wouldn't think there was much other information out there. I can wait to find out with everyone else.

Those were truly long taping days! Seems more like an endurance test than one of trivia. The players in the finals must have been exhausted.

15QuestionsAway wrote: From a taping perspective, there were all the problems one would expect with a brand new game show times about 10. I attended the first show last Wednesday, arriving at the 2 pm call time. We got out at 1 am, after taping only one 1 hour show.

Sheesh!

I hope the rent-a-audience was being paid by the hour!

Sheesh! Even "Grad Slam" wasn't that bad!

15QuestionsAway wrote:...and I think you will like it.

It was taped last week over at Disney Studios in Burbank. Unfortunately, I wasn't selected as a contestant.

However, I was very curious about the show, so I decided to enter the world of the Paid Audience Member as a personal sociological experiment. That part of the experience was quite fascinating and merits its own story.

From a taping perspective, there were all the problems one would expect with a brand new game show times about 10. I attended the first show last Wednesday, arriving at the 2 pm call time. We got out at 1 am, after taping only one 1 hour show.

I also attended last Friday's tapings, where I saw shows 4 and 5. That went slightly more smoothly - it took 11 hours with a 1 hour lunch break. Our call time was 9 am and we were out at 8 pm.

I wanted to attend the final show which was also taped last Friday, but the Duel powers that be decided to bring in a fresh audience. Understandable, but unfortunate for me. I wanted to see how it would end - now I have to wait until December 23 like everyone else.

The pace of taping was obviously excruciatingly slow at times, but I think the show will turn out quite well after editing. I think the game is much better than most of the recent game show offerings we've seen, but I'm also sure many of you will find aspects of the show that you don't like.

We were told repeatedly during the taping that "whatever happens at Duel stays at Duel", so for confidentiality reasons I don't want to say too much more about the game itself.

However, I know there's been some articles written about the game, and ABC does have a play-at-home online version in the works. If you ask me questions in the context of articles already written about the show, perhaps I can answer or at least confirm some things.

Are you ready? Let's Duel!

How was Greenie as host?

Appa23 wrote:How was Greenie as host?

Kind of rough during the first show, but the delays had nothing to do with him. His personality didn't really come out. So I'd say professional, but he started off a bit bland.

However, he was much more lively on Friday. He was really into Duel's gameplay and competition aspects. I think you'll find he's a good fit for the format when you see the show.

Obviously he became more comfortable as taping continued, and we'll have to see how the shows look when they're broadcast. It's hard to know what the final product will look like, but I think he did quite a good job for a first time host.

And Marley - yes, fortunately we were paid by the hour!

Wink Martindale and Steve Beverly were talking on Shokus about how they thought Greenberg would make a good host. They bemoaned the fact that today's hosts don't get radio training, which is where they think you learn a lot of stuff. Today's hosts tend to be comedians, who do learn to think on their feet, and who can sometimes juggle lots of things and interact with people well. But they thought he has the most potential of the current crop.

Thanks for the report. I was wondering when they would be taping. I didn't see any announcements of tickets available. How much did they pay? I'd have done it for free, if I lived in the area. Were there only six shows taped? The initial announcement said the network ordered ten episodes. Would the format work as a regular weekly show, or does it only work as a special event or tournament? Did contestants win money each episode, or is there just one big winner at the end, as in Grand Slam?

TheConfessor wrote:Thanks for the report. I was wondering when they would be taping. I didn't see any announcements of tickets available. How much did they pay? I'd have done it for free, if I lived in the area. Were there only six shows taped? The initial announcement said the network ordered ten episodes. Would the format work as a regular weekly show, or does it only work as a special event or tournament? Did contestants win money each episode, or is there just one big winner at the end, as in Grand Slam?

The pay was California minimum wage ($7.50/h). As far as I know, the audience was entirely paid. I think the producers knew the schedule would be gruelling, so I doubt there were any tickets made available to the public.

There were six episodes taped, and there was a definite conclusion. I think Duel will work best as a strip (just like it's being run from December 17 to 23), but it still could work like Grand Slam - as a weekly show leading up to some kind of grand final.

Contestants can and did win money along the way. Duel is also not a bracketed single-elimination tournament like Grand Slam.

I did read about the format somewhere beforehand, so some of it seemed familiar. But I don't remember where or whether the report was entirely accurate.

15QuestionsAway wrote:I did read about the format somewhere beforehand, so some of it seemed familiar. But I don't remember where or whether the report was entirely accurate.

Here's the most detailed article I've seen about it:
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx ... 71119abc01

Does that seem accurate? It sounds as if they had a closed-ended format already planned that was guaranteed to reach a conclusion at the end of six episodes, with one person guaranteed to win the jackpot. That sounds a lot like Grand Slam to me, and not a continuing series.

TheConfessor wrote:

15QuestionsAway wrote:I did read about the format somewhere beforehand, so some of it seemed familiar. But I don't remember where or whether the report was entirely accurate.

Here's the most detailed article I've seen about it:
http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx ... 71119abc01

Does that seem accurate? It sounds as if they had a closed-ended format already planned that was guaranteed to reach a conclusion at the end of six episodes, with one person guaranteed to win the jackpot. That sounds a lot like Grand Slam to me, and not a continuing series.

I understand what you're saying. Duel is a competition where the winner will receive a jackpot, like Grand Slam.

The article is mostly accurate, but it doesn't go into how the game actually plays. In that regard, it's quite different from Grand Slam.

When Duel airs, you'll see that the six show limit is arbitrary and can be extended or reduced. I think it works best as a strip, but there's no reason it couldn't air over several weeks, like Dancing With The Stars or Amazing Race. The finallists competing for the jackpot would play on the last show of the season or some other predetermined endpoint.

I watched the promotional videos on the ABC site, including clips from actual game play. This answered some questions and raised some others.

Do the contestants who win each duel get to keep the value of any chips they have left? If so, the winner of each round would earn between $5K and $50K, plus advance to the next round. That seems reasonable. It also seems that if the matches are very close, the final jackpot on Sunday will be bigger than if the matches are one-sided blowouts.

If the above observations are correct, it appears that the total prize budget for the show is known in advance. Each duel is worth $100K, some of which will go to the jackpot and some will go to the winner of each duel. The amount that goes to the jackpot for each duel will be a minimum of $50K and a maximum of $95K. So if there are 20 duels to eliminate the first 20 contestants, that means the final jackpot will be somewhere between $1 million and $1.9 million.

It's not clear how the participants in each duel are determined. Apparently one person gets a chance to choose which of three possible opponents to face, based on incomplete information about the players.

The first five days are all about trying to be one of the final 4 players. Logically, each of the four finalists would have to defeat 5 of the other players. Is that the way it works, or is there a chance that some people would have to face more opponents than others do?

Looks like a pretty good show. Most of the questions I glimpsed on the clips looked fairly easy, but there was one that I'd have no clue about. They asked the color of George Bush's eyes. I got the impression that most of the contestants were selected more for fitting a variety of stereotypes than for their trivia knowledge. It also appeared that the show encouraged taunting and trash talking, which seems pointless and classless for a knowledge competition.

When I first saw this thread, I had no clue what it was about and ignored it.

I apologize.

I now know what it is about and am excited!

I wonder what it takes, as a contestant, to stay focused and 'up for the game' for that long.

huh?

peacock2121 wrote:huh?

Spoiler

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067023/

merci!

TheConfessor wrote:I watched the promotional videos on the ABC site, including clips from actual game play. This answered some questions and raised some others.

Do the contestants who win each duel get to keep the value of any chips they have left? If so, the winner of each round would earn between $5K and $50K, plus advance to the next round. That seems reasonable. It also seems that if the matches are very close, the final jackpot on Sunday will be bigger than if the matches are one-sided blowouts.

If the above observations are correct, it appears that the total prize budget for the show is known in advance. Each duel is worth $100K, some of which will go to the jackpot and some will go to the winner of each duel. The amount that goes to the jackpot for each duel will be a minimum of $50K and a maximum of $95K. So if there are 20 duels to eliminate the first 20 contestants, that means the final jackpot will be somewhere between $1 million and $1.9 million.

It's not clear how the participants in each duel are determined. Apparently one person gets a chance to choose which of three possible opponents to face, based on incomplete information about the players.

The first five days are all about trying to be one of the final 4 players. Logically, each of the four finalists would have to defeat 5 of the other players. Is that the way it works, or is there a chance that some people would have to face more opponents than others do?

Looks like a pretty good show. Most of the questions I glimpsed on the clips looked fairly easy, but there was one that I'd have no clue about. They asked the color of George Bush's eyes. I got the impression that most of the contestants were selected more for fitting a variety of stereotypes than for their trivia knowledge. It also appeared that the show encouraged taunting and trash talking, which seems pointless and classless for a knowledge competition.

Since Duel starts tomorrow, and they've posted so much about the gameplay on their site, I don't have any problems answering these questions:

1. Winners of a Duel keep the value of their remaining chips. It doesn't matter whether they make the final four.

2. As I mentioned before, it is not a bracketed elimination tournament. The first player was selected at random. That first player and every subsequent Duel winner are offered three possible opponents at random. She/he selects her/his opponent for the next Duel from those three. Duellists play until they lose, so your logic about having to defeat 5 other players is incorrect. When a player loses, they're either one of the current top 4, or they're eliminated from the tournament.

3. The players are categorized by their professions, but many of them are dark horses. For example (not a real one), there could be a waitress with a 4.0 college GPA. All of the contestants did have to pass a 50 question trivia test, which I found a little more difficult than the Millionaire test. So each of them have some basic trivia skills.

4. Players are ranked by the number of Duels they win then by their dollar winnings. So someone that has won 2 Duels and has $10k outranks someone that has won 1 Duel and has $45k. The final 4 are the ones at the top of this leaderboard at the end of the first 5 shows.

5. Some of the 24 players will not get to play. Most do get a shot however. And there is a mechanism in place to allow the last Duel winner to play their way into the fourth finallist spot.

6. There is some trash talking, but I didn't find it excessive. Depends upon how it's edited. It's not a straight knowledge based show like Millionaire or Jeopardy. There is strategy involved as to how you answer your question (using 1-4 chips) and how you perceive your opponent will answer the question.

15QuestionsAway wrote: 5. Some of the 24 players will not get to play. Most do get a shot however. And there is a mechanism in place to allow the last Duel winner to play their way into the fourth finallist spot.

But if the winners from the previous rounds never choose you as their next opponent, you never get to play? That sucks.

15QuestionsAway wrote: 2. As I mentioned before, it is not a bracketed elimination tournament. The first player was selected at random. That first player and every subsequent Duel winner are offered three possible opponents at random. She/he selects her/his opponent for the next Duel from those three. Duellists play until they lose, so your logic about having to defeat 5 other players is incorrect. When a player loses, they're either one of the current top 4, or they're eliminated from the tournament.

4. Players are ranked by the number of Duels they win then by their dollar winnings. So someone that has won 2 Duels and has $10k outranks someone that has won 1 Duel and has $45k. The final 4 are the ones at the top of this leaderboard at the end of the first 5 shows.

5. Some of the 24 players will not get to play. Most do get a shot however. And there is a mechanism in place to allow the last Duel winner to play their way into the fourth finallist spot.

Okay, now I'm confused again. It would suck big time to be one of the 24 but not get a chance to play. So you could be the potential Ken Jennings of Duel, but no one would ever know it if you weren't randomly selected from the pool, or if the current champion never chose to play against you. Bummer.

At one extreme case, the first player would win all of his games and no one else would even qualify to be in the finals. Frankly, that seems not beyond the realm of possibility. How would they handle that?

On your item #2 above, you say that the losers are either eliminated from the tournament or stay in if they're in the top four. I assume you would never be in the top 4 unless you have at least one win, right? So anyone who loses his first game is automatically out, but if you have a couple of wins before you lose, you might still be in. So having a 1-1 record is automatically better than a 0-0 record. I guess at the end of show #5, all contestants who have played will have one loss, except for whoever happens to be the winner of the final duel. So if that person happens to be 1-0 at that point, several other people might be 1-1, and they might rank ahead of the undefeated guy if they won more money. Or the top 4 might already have at least 2 wins, but the 1-0 guy somehow gets a chance to replace one of them in the final 4.

Sounds confusing, though I guess it's the only way to assure that the first five episodes produce four players for the final. You never know how long each duel will take, so they just keep playing more duels until they run out of time, which necessitates overbooking of contestants, and some of them don't get to play. I guess that's fair, as long as the rules are clear from the start.

TheConfessor wrote:

15QuestionsAway wrote: 2. As I mentioned before, it is not a bracketed elimination tournament. The first player was selected at random. That first player and every subsequent Duel winner are offered three possible opponents at random. She/he selects her/his opponent for the next Duel from those three. Duellists play until they lose, so your logic about having to defeat 5 other players is incorrect. When a player loses, they're either one of the current top 4, or they're eliminated from the tournament.

4. Players are ranked by the number of Duels they win then by their dollar winnings. So someone that has won 2 Duels and has $10k outranks someone that has won 1 Duel and has $45k. The final 4 are the ones at the top of this leaderboard at the end of the first 5 shows.

5. Some of the 24 players will not get to play. Most do get a shot however. And there is a mechanism in place to allow the last Duel winner to play their way into the fourth finallist spot.

Okay, now I'm confused again. It would suck big time to be one of the 24 but not get a chance to play. So you could be the potential Ken Jennings of Duel, but no one would ever know it if you weren't randomly selected from the pool, or if the current champion never chose to play against you. Bummer.

At one extreme case, the first player would win all of his games and no one else would even qualify to be in the finals. Frankly, that seems not beyond the realm of possibility. How would they handle that?

On your item #2 above, you say that the losers are either eliminated from the tournament or stay in if they're in the top four. I assume you would never be in the top 4 unless you have at least one win, right? So anyone who loses his first game is automatically out, but if you have a couple of wins before you lose, you might still be in. So having a 1-1 record is automatically better than a 0-0 record. I guess at the end of show #5, all contestants who have played will have one loss, except for whoever happens to be the winner of the final duel. So if that person happens to be 1-0 at that point, several other people might be 1-1, and they might rank ahead of the undefeated guy if they won more money. Or the top 4 might already have at least 2 wins, but the 1-0 guy somehow gets a chance to replace one of them in the final 4.

Sounds confusing, though I guess it's the only way to assure that the first five episodes produce four players for the final. You never know how long each duel will take, so they just keep playing more duels until they run out of time, which necessitates overbooking of contestants, and some of them don't get to play. I guess that's fair, as long as the rules are clear from the start.

Yes - obviously you have to win at least 1 Duel to be in the top 4. If you lose, you're out. Losers can't be picked again - they're done, unless they have enough Duels and cash already won to put them in the current top 4.

The pool of potential opponents diminishes as the week goes on - no player who loses a Duel gets to play again until the final show. And then, obviously, only if they're in the final 4.

If you're in the top 4 during the week, it's a waiting game to see if someone wins enough total Duels and cash to knock you out.

The player that wins the final Duel gets an opportunity to play their way into the final 4 if they don't have enough Duels or money won to displace the fourth place player. It's a feature in the game. I won't spoil how it works, but you'll get to see it happen.

Some people did not get the chance to play. That's where the "Identity" aspect of the game comes in - the current Duel champion selects their next opponent from the three possibilities based on what they know and/or believe about them.

If a possible opponent seems too formidable, for whatever reason, they don't get selected. The "dark horse" aspect of the contestants comes into play here - Duel winners will have their prejudices tested.

Tom Shales's review in the Washington Post panned the show, but his write-up indicates there are some elements of the show that escape him.

Spoiler

He decries the low $ value of the jackpot at the end of the first show, and stating that tonight's winners will only be getting about $10K.

I suspect it's much better than his perceptions (he particularly dislikes Greenie's hosting job).

Some of that should be in a spoiler box, Tim.

thguy65 wrote:Tom Shales's review in the Washington Post panned the show, but his write-up indicates there are some elements of the show that escape him.

Spoiler

He decries the low $ value of the jackpot at the end of the first show, and stating that tonight's winners will only be getting about $10K.

I suspect it's much better than his perceptions (he particularly dislikes Greenie's hosting job).

I love his conclusion:

Forty-six years ago, FCC Chairman Newton Minow (the FCC had smart chairmen back then) famously called prime-time TV "a vast wasteland." Whoa, boy. He should see it now. If the powers that be prevail, it will only be vaster, and more of a waste, in years to come.

Bob Juch wrote:I love his conclusion:

Forty-six years ago, FCC Chairman Newton Minow (the FCC had smart chairmen back then) famously called prime-time TV "a vast wasteland." Whoa, boy. He should see it now. If the powers that be prevail, it will only be vaster, and more of a waste, in years to come.

A fine old quote that can be hauled out for any show someone doesn't like.



But any commentary that criticises TPTB can't be all bad!