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I was watching a couple of game shows last night and it sort of struck me, how does this stuff get made? Does someone come up with an idea, survive being pelted with tomatoes and Day Time Emmy's and if 3 out of 5 executive ghouls don't want to strip the flesh off your body the show gets made? Is there a development hell like in the movies or a writers room with no exits with a pneumatic tube constantly dumping "notes" from executives into the room? If you have ever worked on a game show, pitched one or turned one down I am curious to hear about it.
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Jun 12, 2020 23:16
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 20:56 |
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It's probably changed a lot in the past few years, but I ran a gameshow for a single episode in the 90s. Here's how it started. During my last year of college, I used to do this funny voice. It was all about making fun of radio hosts and how they sound like they've got botox smile implants in their esophagus. I think success in radio is more about having a weird, different voice than actually having a good voice. Publicity seems to be about what's different as opposed to what’s better. By the time of graduation, everyone thought my fake voice was my real one since it was so much fun to mock the radio guys 24/7. I was invited to make a speech and spoke some inspirational garbage I didn't believe but sounded deep. I spoke and I used the funny voice. Everyone loved it. A tv exec was in the crowd since his daughter was graduating. He asked me if I'd like to get involved with a tv project. I said ok, but only if I don't have to deal with eggheads. Never agree to do work with eggheads. He promised not to involve any eggheads. It turns out he was a liar. The tv gig was this gameshow I'd be hosting using the voice. He didn't know it was a fake voice. The plan was to have a live studio audience and three guests each episode. The guests would take turns solving technical puzzles like jigsaws and rubix cubes. Stuff that's fun as single-player but really boring with multiple-player. I told him you'd have to be an idiot to watch that. He said that gameshows are all about having wacky characters for the guests, especially if they're stupid. People at home want to feel like they're smart, so if you show them stupid morons who can’t accomplish a basic task, that makes it a gameshow worth watching. Then he revealed the feature of the gameshow that made it worthwhile. As the host, I get to provoke the audience as the timer counted down. When it got closer to zero, I'd start handing out garbage for the audience to throw at the contestants. He said I'd go around with a basket full of pillows, water balloons, stuffed animals, tomatoes, dodgeballs, comically large toys. The audience members would get in a line and jettison the paraphernalia at the contestants while I smiled and cheered them on in the funny voice. I was skeptical but said I'd try it out anyway. He said we need to do a pilot episode so the stations will approve. It's all about getting the episodes out at the right time of the year. If you don't make it in time for the next usual season time, you might as well give up since the show would sit around for a few months and then the agencies won't think it was that good. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s not new to them anymore. So we literally set up shop for filming the first episode that weekend and planned to show the network a few days later. At the first showing, the audience was filled with random people from the street that wanted to be on tv. It's apparently easy to get an audience if you have sound machines with unusual noises to attract people that don't care about their free time. I stood up front ready to give the introduction to the 3 contestants. Two jock guys and one girl. One of the jocks went first. At that point, I opened my mouth to speak my words and the whole audience was captivated by the funny voice. I told the audience what the show was about and now it’s time for Jock #1 to solve the puzzle for babies. While that was happening, I ran to the back to get the first projectiles. That’s when I met the egghead that would ruin everything. It was the props guy. The props guy was the egghead because he handed me a handheld cooler. At that point, I didn’t know how screwed I was about to be. I ran back on stage and over to the audience. They were counting down and screaming the numbers on the timer as it ticked down. I opened the cooler and instantly regretted it. The cooler was filled with discolored yellow-green mayo combined with foreign objects like potato salad with uncut potatoes. Gross, but very good for throwing. The audience didn’t care about the grossness at that point, so they savagely scooped the mayo-engulfed projectiles and threw them at the contestants. It didn’t just hit the contestant doing the puzzle - it hit all three of them and they frowned. One solidified mayo missile locked on, targeted, and creamed Jock #1’s plums, and he bent over in agony like he had a bad cramp. You could feel the aching and sickness he was enduring. It was exciting to watch. The audience’s adrenaline was spiking from the fun of throwing the mayo, but that hyperarousal blunted their senses. The smell sense came back into full effect a few seconds later. The mayo was not regular mayo. It was expired spoiled rotten mayo from the tomb of the undead refrigerator. Absolutely disgusting. The stink smell from the awful mayo spread through the stage. Everyone held their hands on their sniffers in order to save their noses from the burning fire stink scent, but those that had participated in the scooping of the sinful mayo with their fingers were getting it up their snouts and making it worse. The putrid bad stink made me gag and my throat went numb. I could barely breathe, much less speak. It was my duty to calm the audience, but I couldn’t utter a word. We put up fans to get the stink smell out. After a while, I was able to breathe again. I spoke to the audience, but something was different deep inside of me. Instead of the funny voice, I could only use my regular voice. I was trying to do the radio voice, but my vocal cords were irreversibly damaged from huffing the ghastly odor. The funny voice died that day because of the dishonorable mayo stink smell, and all I had left was the worthless standard common voice. The crowd frowned and booed at hearing the bad regular voice. Those that were still around despite the bad smell started to leave. The show was over. We couldn’t film anything else that day because of the stink and the bad normal voice. It was the stupid egghead props guy that ruined the show. The idiot props guy should have known that stinky items wouldn’t work on tv. People watching from behind their screens wouldn’t be able to smell the stink! What a waste! So dumb. Don’t make the same mistake as the props guy if you make a gameshow. At the end, I asked the tv exec if he enjoyed the show and he frowned.    
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Feb 1, 2023 19:09
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Just like most shows, you use connections / reps to get meetings around town. I don’t know how it is post Covid, but you would be expected to have a pitch deck, it’s nice if you can attach a host as talent. If they like it, they buy it, and either order to series, test out the concept/make a pilot, all depending on if it’s a major or a streamer. (Of course, all of this can go a ton of different ways. You might think a production company with a commitment to produce some thing, you might get asked if you’ve previously had a hit show if you want to work on something… you might be a major corporation, and have enough money that wild cherry Pepsi get its own game show. In the old days, the best way to do it was to have a hit radio show, then have a new medium come along. I know a Producer that has an idea that app makers might like, but he hasn’t been able to get it going despite getting shows on prime time.)
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Mar 12, 2023 08:49
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