On the show, contestents are allowed to “phone a friend”; obviously this isn’t some hit or miss thing. They are always “home”, and pick up on the first ring.
How do they work this? If you are tapped for friend-by-the-phone duty, you have no way of knowing how they are doing, or even if they have made it on to the floor, as the show is taped. I suppose careful editing might be part of the answer, but what’s the deal?
Your phone friends are told to be home for the whole taping.
My wife saw one where the person didn’t answer - and that was it for his ‘phone a friend’ lifeline.
I was a friend (actually each contestant is allowed to choose several, and then picks the one most likely to help with that particular question.)
We were asked to stay by the phone for a 2-hour period. It turns out my contestant didn’t have fast enough fingers to get on the hot seat, but I had no way of knowing that until the taping was over.
According to their website when I checked a while back, contestants are allowed to pick 5 friends. When they start taping, all the friends are called and warned to stick by the phone. When the contestant gets to the hot seat, all the friends are called again to make sure they’re still around.
Smeghead has it right. In addition, when the contestant says he’s going to use the PAF and gives the name of the person he’s calling, a production assistant places the call (the numbers are preprogrammed earlier in the day) while Regis (or Chris or Pamela or whoever, for some of you ) goes through his patter. While it appears the friend answers on the first ring, it’s actually the third. The friends are called ahead of time by the PA and cautioned not to pick up the phone until the third ring, and then only to answer with “Hello?”.
When the 30 second limit is reached, the contestant can no longer hear the friend, but the friend can still hear the audio in the studio, until the answer portion is over. When the contestant is done playing, or has used the lifeline, the unused friends get stand-down calls.
I was ready to be a PAF several times.
Just to brag; I did get called once, didn’t know the answer, my friend decided to answer anyways and LOST $250,000 (it was the $500,000 question).
I had arranged to have several Jeopardy! caliber friends in one place in order to get this person’s call, in order to profit (if we had supplied the correct answer) by receiving an agreed-upon 10% of the value of the question.
One thing no one has pointed out yet is that the contestant and the show have virtually all the time in the world to make the decision to call and to get ahold of the person. They then edit any boring or uninteresting minutes out for the broadcast.
As stated earlier, they show calls the (up to) 5 Phone A Friend names each contestant has provided them with, getting their agreement to be there during a two-hour period (I think that’s the time frame, I don’t remember that exactly), to answer on the third ring and how to answer.
I don’t know if they do this with everybody, but I was in a situation a couple of times where I was at a business where I would not normally answer the phone, and they agreed to call first if my friend got into the hot seat, so from that point on I would answer instead of the receptionist.
Even then, the one time my friend did make it on, our receptionist screwed up and answered anyways. When I got on the phone, they just called right back so I was the one who answered the phone.