Yet another reason to lose faith in your fellow man.

[Nebu]

People are more easily entertained than I ever would have imagined.

[WayAbvPar]

Way back in the mid-80's I predicted that Howie Mandel heralded the downfall of Western Civilization. It took him a bit longer than I expected, which is good news of sorts.

[HaemishM]

Americans are fucking morons. But, to be fair, there wasn't shit else on network TV last week anyway.

[Nebu]

Any bets on the Saddam hanging getting televised and interrupted by high buck commercials?

[Yegolev]

Cheer up.  More people are subscribed to World of Warcraft than watch Fox.

[penfold]

At this point I would make some kind of comment about the state of US TV and how good the BBC is (as we Brits are want to do), but one of our biggest shows this year was Deal or No Deal, so yes, you're absolutely right, mankind is doomed.

[Cheddar]

Deal or no Deal is genius.  Again, all of you are jaded.

It is very fun if you watch it with loved ones.  :P

[Evangolis]

Many things are fun with loved ones, and for me, that is part of why they are loved ones.

[Sky]

I lost a little respect for Penn Gillette with his new crappy game show thing. I know the bills need to get paid, but c'mon, man. Where's Bullshit?

[Roac]

People are more easily entertained than I ever would have imagined.

There's not much difference between this and most other game shows that are or have been on TV.  The major difference is that most games have contestants competing against one another with a minimal skill element, whereas this one focuses on the contestant's risk aversion.  Eh, whatever.  I don't see much of a difference between that show and football - I don't see the point in watching someone else play a game, unless it's someone you personally know (friend was on that show, your kid's softball game, etc).  It still comes down to someone sitting on their couch, trying to outguess the contestant at Jeopardy or whatever, and imagining they were the one taking home the loot, or pretending they could coach/ref a game better.  This show just makes the point a bit more obvious to some people.

[Nebu]

This show just makes the point a bit more obvious to some people.

Are you seriously trying to equate Jeopardy with picking_a_suitcase_and_assessing_risk?  How about Ben Stein's Money or Stump the Schwab? 

Then the whole football thing... what's up with that?  Football and a gameshow with people picking a suitcase?  Come on now... reducing things to absurdity is a nice tactic, but let's at least compare apples to apples.  Football is a combination of atheletic prowess and strategy.  It's a different beast.  Unless the point you're trying to reduce this too is that it's all staring at a CRT (or LCD or Plasma) screen which then makes ALL television shows/movies identical. 

[Merusk]

If you're into statistics, or human behavior Deal or No Deal can be an interesting game.  NPR had a few statisticians and behavior specialists talking about it back when it first started airing, and I was amused. 

 For example, if someone 'loses' by picking a big-number they're MORE likely to continue picking, figuring there's no more 'small' numbers up there than they are to stop because they got burned.

Me, I just like watching to see people pick randomly and hope, rather than going "my odds are 12:1, and  he's offering me $100k to walk".   The thing is people are too uneducated to put any level of skill into the game.  That's the fault of the people, not the game itself.

Jeopardy and Ben Stein value different sorts of education and levels of knowledge.  Their payoffs are much smaller, because a much larger percentage of the population knows what they're asking about than doesn't.

[Roac]

Are you seriously trying to equate Jeopardy with picking_a_suitcase_and_assessing_risk?  How about Ben Stein's Money or Stump the Schwab? 

Then the whole football thing... what's up with that?  Football and a gameshow with people picking a suitcase?  Come on now... reducing things to absurdity is a nice tactic, but let's at least compare apples to apples.  Football is a combination of atheletic prowess and strategy.  It's a different beast.

Equate no, draw heavy similarities to, yes.  And there is a little more than just picking the suitcase; it's whether the Banker's offer is even close to the real value, how that difference stakcs up to one's risk tolerance, and one's guess as to the possible outcomes of an offer if you go one more round.  Having spent much more time paying attention to football than math, averaging numbers on the fly is a fairly tough challenge for most people even if it wouldn't be for you or me.  Jeopardy is just a trivia game.  It's not about wit or even intelligence so much as access to a large set of trivia.  Jennings, although intelligent, outside the gameshow hasn't demonstrated Einsteinian genius.  He's Cliff Clavin.  The game, essentially, reduces down to how much random trivia the producers come up with matches up with what random trivia the contestants know.  Oh, and risk assessment situations when it comes to gambling your money on Double/Final Jeopardy.  

Unless the point you're trying to reduce this too is that it's all staring at a CRT (or LCD or Plasma) screen which then makes ALL television shows/movies identical.  

I didn't say they were identical, and so wouldn't go on to say such about all shows.  If you want to argue other game shows are a notch better on some scale than this, that's fine.  I didn't disagree.  What I argued was that they are not fundamentally different.  Probably why I don't watch much TV.  Mostly 'edutainment' stuff (Discovery, History, etc), my handful of Sci-Fi shows (which I admit as cheap entertainment), and rarely CNN.
/shrug

[Yegolev]

Deal or no Deal is genius.  Again, all of you are jaded.

It is very fun if you watch it with loved ones.  :P

Don't you watch The View?

[Cheddar]

Don't you watch The View?

I will shank you.

[Furiously]

I'm pretty convinced it's a staged show.

[Dren]

My wife watches it quite often.  It is obviously staged in the way that they are not just randomly picking people from the audience.  They have picked the people way in advance.  We believe they also pick them based on their tendency to go nutso crazy over the littlest things.  They want them to push the drama factor.

They also make sure that they can offer those stupid little personal things during the show at certain points.  I've seen them do things for specific sports they like, or colors, or cars (offered one girl a lime green pimped out car at one point.)

As to whether they rig what they win or not, I doubt that is true.  They do certainly stage everything else though.  It is quite obvious.

*Edit:  the fact that they flew in one lady's entire family from Africa on one episode proves this.

[Abagadro]

My wife watches it quite often.  It is obviously staged in the way that they are not just randomly picking people from the audience.  They have picked the people way in advance.  We believe they also pick them based on their tendency to go nutso crazy over the littlest things.  They want them to push the drama factor.

That's the same model as The Price is Right.

[Merusk]

That's the same model as The Price is Right.

Damn, you beat me to it.

3 fairly sure ways to get on The Price is Right:

1) Be in the Millitary
2) Have ginormous boobs, and an itsy-bitsy bra with no support.
3) Be a goddamn psycho, with a "Rod Lives" or "I <3 Bob!!" shirt.

Then you make sure you talk your damn head off telling stories and such when waiting with the rest of the Studio audience.  Gameshows aren't the place for the disaffected cool that most internet folks try to wear.

[Nebu]

When I created this thread I never intended to bash people that watched this show.  I've caught myself watching it for brief moments.  The post was more pointing out that a large number of Americans felt that this was the best thing on television at that time.  Number one for ratings means a hell of a lot of people tuned in. 

Yet more proof that I'll never understand the tastes of the general public.

[schild]

Cheer up. More people are subscribed to World of Warcraft than watch Fox.

Fox, World of Warcraft.

Diluted, bad, and full of recycled ideas.

What's the fucking difference?

[Evangolis]

Cheer up. More people are subscribed to World of Warcraft than watch Fox.

Fox, World of Warcraft.

Diluted, bad, and full of recycled ideas.

What's the fucking difference?

I can't PK Bill O'Reilly

[Oban]

No, but you can report him:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1013043mackris1.html