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 A Surprise for NBC on Wednesdays FEB. 11, 2011 8 pm When I was on Stu Shostak's New Year's Eve bash on Shokus Internet Radio, a caller asked what I thought of Guy Fieri as the host of NBC's Minute to Win It. I told the caller, "While I watch Guy regularly on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on Food Network, he would not have been my choice to host the show." However, you have to remember: network executives today are going after an entirely new demographic and culture. Bud Collyer, Jack Narz, Monty Hall and even Gary Kroeger----all of whom did Beat the Clock----would have a difficult time getting arrested at NBC in the current climate. A week ago, when Minute to Win It scored a 3.1 rating in 18-49s in a two-hour slot, NBC opted to cancel its expensive drama Chase. Going with a double bill of Minute on Wednesdays as counterprogramming to Fox's American Idol and ABC's Modern Family and Mr. Sunshine would offer a low-cost alternative with acceptable demographics. While the 18-49 rating dipped to 2.3 in the 9-10 hour Wednesday night, Minute still equaled the younger demographics of CBS's Blue Bloods in the 10-11 slot. Minute drew 7.3 million viewers for its first-run episode, which is higher than the average of the highly-promoted Who Wants to Be a Millionaire 10th anniversary specials of a year and a half ago. The show is entertaining enough and Guy knows how to get out of the way and let the contestants play. However, the last 20 minutes Wednesday night dragged and dragged and dragged, a la some of the later Deal or No Deal shows, when the lengthy biography and features of the two young humanitarian contestants were offered. The real kicker: this shows you what kind of job Comcast has as NBC's new owner. The old regime poured a lot of money into attempts to rebuild drama for the network. For a remake of Beat the Clock to ace out a crime hour, one wonders what would happen if NBC tried to bring back Mike Stokey's Pantomime Quiz?  Ken, Brad, Watson Monday, the showdown between game show multimillionaires Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and an IBM computer launches the highlight February sweeps stunt for Jeopardy! I've been asked many times since the Ultimate Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions five years ago whether Rutter, who won the Ultimate event, or Jennings was the better player. That's like asking whether Snickers is better than Milky Way. I only use that because I'm tired of the apples vs. oranges analogy. Plain and simple: both guys are the pinnacles of game show achievement. Until beaten, Ken's 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy! will go down as the greatest feat in game show history. That string was a hall of fame accomplishment we may never again see on television. Rutter is one of the greatest tournament players in history. He is not intimidated by tough competitors. Plus, in the Ultimate event, he did what often has to happen----whether you're in the NCAA basketball tournament or a quiz show showdown. He won at least one elimination game that he probably should not have, as he reflected to me in a post-tourney interview in 2005. People have pointed to the Michael Davies Grand Slam tournament on GSN in which Jennings was the grand champion. Ken was indeed a champion of champions.....but Grand Slam was of a different structure----totally guided by the clock and closer to Tom Kennedy's underrated Split Second than Jeopardy! Candidly, I'm looking forward to this simply to see two great players get together to tee it up again in a gimmick event. Oddly, back during Bob Boden's second tour at GSN, he commissioned a pilot called Man vs. Machine. That one never made the grade. We'll see if this variation is any better. TheGameShowFix.com is a non-incorporated news website. The material used is the creation of the webmaster, unless otherwise noted. Use of stillframes from broadcasts is part of fair use news arrangements. Any reproduction or other use of the accounts published here without the expressed written consent of TheGameShowFix.com is strictly prohibited. At no time has TheGameShowFix.com or its predecessor, TVgameshows.net, ever been offered for public sale, such as in a stock offering or any financial transaction. Any attempt to engage in such practice is illegal and strictly forbidden. |
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