I’m not normally the type of person given to rants, but I can no longer remain silent–I need to vent BIG TIME!
A couple of months ago, there was a local contestant search for “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire”. I went there, took the written test, and passed it. About 25 or so people from my group of about 200 were then brought into another room for a brief interview with the contestant coordinators. I thought I did OK, and they said I’d be contacted in about a month to let me know whether or not I was accepted into the “contestant pool”. Unfortunately, I got the “no” postcard. At that point I said, OK, there aren’t that many openings and I guess I didn’t fit their particular criteria.
Problem: now, when I watch, I am even more aware of the number of DUMBFUCKS that they deem “acceptable”. I’m talking about the perky 21-year-old college student who grabs for a lifeline on a question I knew in the 4th fucking grade! Or the middle-management slacker who gets a question on quantum physics and uses his Aunt Sadie as his phone-a-friend because he promised her he’d get her on TV!
Oh, and the people who jump on those lifelines without at least reading through the question once or twice to see if maybe there’s a clue in the question. Newsflash, dickheads: THERE’S NO TIME LIMIT! TAKE YOUR FREAKIN’ TIME!
So why do I still watch? Because I enjoy challenging myself mentally. Unfortunately, lately, the only thing “mentally challenged” are the contestants!
Anyone else who’s tried out for the show and been rejected feel this way?
The ultimate insult would have been when the contestant who took your place (I know there is no way to determine this…but if there were) got to the chair and missed the $100 question after burning all three lifelines.
You do know that they recruit for “personality”,“looks”,“charisma”,“drama” and not “intelligence” don’t you?
I don’t think they really care how smart the people are. As long as they can look good on camera and be overdramatic with their reactions/conversation.
There was this one episode of Golden Girls where Dorothy tries out for Jeopardy and studies real hard and gets every question right and is all super psyched about it. She is roundly rejected by the judges and her spot goes to Rose, who is sweet, lovable, and dumb as a post.
One of the earliest contestants on the oringinal (Regis) show did. His first question concerned what species of animal Hannibal used to cross the Alps. He asked the audience, who came back 98% for “elephants”. He thought that didn’t make any sense, so he used the 50/50, which came back “elephants” and “llamas”. Then he called his loser roommate, who agreed with him that elephants made no sense. So he went bye-bye on the first question.
Many people have gone home with nothing; in fact, they ran a special group of shows to bring back those contestants. The “Hannibal” guy ended up with $32,000.
There seem to be differences in recruitment methods between the US & the UK.
As far as I’m aware, in this country everything is done by phone. You call a premium rate number and are given a (recorded) question. If you answer correctly you leave a contact number so that someone can get back to you if you are one of the chosen few.
From all the correct submissions for a given show, 100 are picked for a call back. You are asked a question which demands a numerical answer. The 10 people who are nearest to the correct answer for their question in percentage terms are then invited to be contestants.
That’s how it was when I got on the show and I’m pretty sure things haven’t changed.
They’ve had plenty of reasonably smart people on Millionaire. I’ve a bit of a trivia head and I’ve seen contestants who knew answers I’d never have gotten.
“Millionaire” recruitment is based on getting an interesting cross-section of people, because the spectacle of the show is the pressure that’s put on the contestant; that’s also why he’s sitting on an uncomfortable stool and is entirely surrounded by the audience.
“Jeopardy!” on the other hand is designed to appeal to trivia heads, which is why they concentrate on presenting a really huge number of questions - you could in theory have 61 questions presented in a single game, which is about one every 22 seconds of air time (and faster than that if you discount intro and conversation.) In that context you NEED some bright people or else the show’s pace slows down.
I read somewhere that they screen for the “middle.” Supposedly they screen out like the top third and the bottom third and select for an “average” intelligence. If that’s true, it’s scary because if the people on the show are the “middle,” I shudder to think what kind of dunces are on the bottom.
Appropos of nothing, but the lack of a time limit on that show makes it unwatchable. It’s unbearable to watch those imbeciles just sit there and sit there and sit there like stumps agonizing over a 4th grade level question about who wrote Tom Sawyer.
I remember seeing a woman miss that question, but she didn’t use three lifelines (as I recall, she only used one, but I don’t remember which one). She did end up picking the more absurd of the other three options.
I’m willing to accept that my memory on this is faulty, but I do remember actually seeing that episode.
I notice that this week, in the new season of Millionaire, they’ve done away with the AOL version of Ask the Audience.
Undoubtedly because the AOL Audience was dumber than a bag of hammers. Their responses were inevitably – 90% of the time I watched, at least – wronger (ie, lower % chose the right answer) than the studio audience.
Bad advertising for AOL, too. “Your userbase appear to be morons.”
Fun times on today’s show. The contestant – big-haired woman from Connecticut – was facing the question, "which university’s mascot is a bulldog named “Uga” – Duke, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, University of Georgia.
She phoned her friend, who said “well, ‘Uga’ has got be short for U of GA, right?”
Contestant said, “Oh, Jeezus Christ!!”, and they bleeped her. Hilarity ensued.