ShowMeTheMoney-related stories
Posted Nov 24th 2006 4:30PM by Brett Love
Filed under: ABC, Programming, Lost, Watercooler Talk, Dancing With The Stars, The Nine, Ratings, Day Break
There has been much chatter about ABC's somewhat unconventional scheduling of
Lost this season. In an effort to avoid a repeat filled schedule, they have split the season into two parts, handing off the time slot to
Day Break for three months in the middle. While they will tell you it was because of outcry from the fans, the cynic in me thinks that the fact that
Lost doesn't repeat well had something to do with it.
Either way, it's not working. Rather, it's
really not working.
Day Break premiered with a somewhat disappointing 11 million viewers, despite having the
Dancing with the Stars finale drop 27 million sets of eyeballs on their doorstep. But 11 million sounds just grand compared to this week. With the dancing shoes stowed away for the foreseeable future, Captain Kirk's
Show Me The Money is delivering just under 8 million viewers as the lead in. And Wednesday,
Day Break only managed to hang on to 5.12 million of them. 5 million? The worst repeat of
Lost would never approach 5 million viewers.
Continue reading Screw the hiatus, bring back Lost now
Posted Nov 22nd 2006 5:03PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Programming
At 8, ABC has a new Show Me The Money, followed by new episodes of Day Break and The Nine. - CBS has a a new Jericho at 8, followed by new episodes of Criminal Minds and CSI: NY.
- NBC has Madonna: The Confessions Tour at 8, followed by a new Medium.
- Cheaper By The Dozen airs on FOX at 8.
- There's a new America's Next Top Model at 8, then a new One Tree Hill.
- The History Channel has a new American Eats at 8, featuring "Holiday Food."
- Food Network repeats the "Ultimate Thanksgiving Feast" episode of Challenge at 8, followed by the repeat of their All-Star Thanksgiving special.
- At 9, The Travel Channel has a new Professional Poker Tour.
- Good episode of The Andy Griffith Show on TV Land at 9, the one where Ellie comes to town.
- At 10, Bravo has a new ep of Top Chef.
Posted Nov 15th 2006 4:02PM by Brett Love
Filed under: ABC, Game Show, Ratings
Last night ABC kicked off their new game show
Show Me The Money in the best time slot they had available, following the finals competition of
Dancing with the Stars. While nobody expected the game show to hold on to all of that
DWTS audience, how little of it they managed to keep has to be a disappointment. Fast nationals for the night have
Show Me The Money losing more than 14 million viewers from the lead-in. That is over half the audience.
I managed to make it through about 45 minutes before switching over to an episode of
Beyond The Break that the Tivo recorded for me. It's not that it is a horrible show. It's just not a particularly good show. The trivia questions were good, and Shatner is Shatner. If you like him, he's good in this. But the show suffers from the same problems as
Deal Or No Deal and
1 vs. 100. To start, it is just mind numbingly slow. There are so many pauses to try and manufacture suspense, and endless repetition of the rules that it becomes boring. There is also nothing to really keep you coming back once you have seen the show the first time. The trivia could be a hook, but the slowness means that there just aren't enough questions to make it worth the time. If this is the replacement for
Dancing with the Stars, there should be a couple slots opening up in the top twenty very soon.
Posted Nov 11th 2006 3:04PM by Brett Love
Filed under: ABC, Programming, Watercooler Talk
With the big Lost mini-season finale already out of the way and the Dancing with the Stars finals next week, I'm left wondering just what ABC is up to. With half of sweeps left to go they are going to be without three of the top ten shows on TV. That seems to fly in the face of traditional scheduling. Wouldn't it have made more sense to throw in a break for DWTS to push it two weeks later? And either extend the Lost mini-season or start it so the, self proclaimed, "Best Episode Of The Year" would end sweeps?
I haven't seen Day Break yet, but I've heard mixed reactions. Whichever way it goes, I think it's reasonable to expect it to fall somewhere short of Lost's performance. If they are counting on Lost fans to tune in just to catch the 30 second nuggets that they will be parceling out, I think they are in for a big YouTube flavored surprise. Add to that the fact that the Wednesday at 9 slot is going to be much tougher for Day Break than it was for Lost. They aren't going to have the luxury of a top 5 show as a lead in, but they'll still have to deal with the increasingly popular Criminal Minds. Show Me The Money should premiere with good numbers, just for the shatnerian curiosity factor, but will it match DWTS? It's all very curious.
Posted Oct 28th 2006 8:20AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: ABC, Celebrities, Game Show
I knew that Shatner hosting a game show would turn out to be interesting, even if the actual game itself was lame. Really, think of it: William Shatner hosting a game show! And now I'm convinced
it's going to be the greatest TV show of all-time.
Show Me The Money will not only have contestants vying for millions of dollars in prizes, but it will have dancers too! After a contestant answers a trivia question (I wonder if they'll be any Star Trek questions?), he picks one of the dancers. Each dancer will have a scroll in her hand, and on the scroll will be a dollar amount that will be added or subtracted to the amount of money the contestant has accumulated.
If that's not good enough for you, get this: at anytime during the show, a dancer can start dancing, and Shatner will dance along with her. Oh, this is going to be sooooo good.
Lisa De Moraes at the
Washington Post calls it "Answers and Dancers," and I think ABC should have called it that too.
Posted Oct 27th 2006 12:31PM by Brett Love
Filed under: ABC, TV Royalty, Celebrities, Game Show
ABC has a bit of a problem.
Dancing with the Stars is going to end soon, they are down to the final four now, and with that it will lose two of the top five shows on TV. They've
announced their plan for Wednesday. Beginning November 22, the results show will be replaced with a new game show from Endemol USA called
Show Me The Money. Contestants will be presented with 13 dancers on stage and each of the dancers will have a scroll. As they answer trivia questions, dollar amounts from the scrolls will be added to or subtracted from their total. The press release also says that the 13 dancers will be ready to break into any style of dance at any time, "while audacious master of ceremonies William Shatner spontaneously boogies with the beauties on stage." Shatner... boogies with the beauties.
Continue reading ABC's big Wednesday plan
Posted Oct 6th 2006 7:29PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: ABC, TV Royalty, Celebrities, Game Show
William Shatner is becoming the next Regis Philbin. He's everywhere!
Besides appearing on
Boston Legal, many different commercials (Priceline, DirecTV, ads for attorneys) and writing books and having a web site, he's
just signed to host a new game show for ABC titled
Show Me The Money. The game will involve contestants answering trivia questions for a prize of $1 million.
Sigh. Hey, I like game shows, but I fear the success of
Deal Or No Deal will push out scripted shows (or, on the flip side, good game shows will be so popular the networks will run them into the ground by having them on 2, 3, 4 times a week). And if they are going to have a game show, why use an already cliche line from some movie from the 90s?
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