1. Let’s say I have, streamable to your TV, every episode of those four shows in the title. You must sit down and watch them all from beginning to end. If you do this, I will give you $500,000 in your country’s currency, tax-free.
The catch is, you don’t get the money until you have finished all the shows, every episode of them. And you must see all of the episodes, if you fall asleep while watching, you must then rewatch all that you missed while you were asleep. You are allowed to look away from the TV screen for minutes at a time if you wish, … Or use the restroom, or go and get food,..but if it goes beyond four or five minutes, you must rewatch what you missed. This means you are not allowed to do anything while you are watching other than watch the show, and you must also have the sound on so that you can hear it.
You can watch them at your own pace, watching as many as just one a day or watching nothing but those shows all day long in a constant marathon, just know the faster you do it, the faster you get paid.
You can take as many breaks as you want from watching, you don’t have to watch every day, you can go as long as a week without watching even after you start, just know you don’t get paid until you are done.
If you give up at any time and don’t want to do it anymore that’s fine, you don’t get any money, however.
Google says that all together, of those four shows, there are about 4, 900 episodes, roughly, and they were all about 60 minutes for the majority of their runs… This would mean that if you watch them all without sleeping, in a row, streaming one after the other, you could finish under a year., under 250 days actually. But if you watch only one episode of one a day, it would obviously take you about 4,900 days.
If you can find any friends or relatives to do this along with you, that’s great, I will pay them another $500,000. The more the merrier. But that’s optional.
That’s all. That’s the whole offer. Those are the rules as far as I can tell.
Do you think you would take this offer and attempt it? Do you think that you would do it alone? How long do you think it would take you if you did take the offer?
4900 episodes, roughly 40-45 minutes each (I’m assuming I don’t have to watch the commercials that padded out the runtime), should take a few years if I dedicate a couple hours to it every day.
I’m tempted to say yes, but I estimate watching 1 to 2 episodes a day (because I have other stuff to do in my life) I estimate it would take 5-6 years for me to complete the project. Some days I’d watch more, probably skip a day every so often. I don’t know if I have six years left and I honestly don’t want to spend those years just watching TV, even quality TV.
The big problem, for me, is not being allowed to do anything else while watching. I’ve long had a habit of doing things like crocheting or knitting while watching TV. If I could do something with my hands while watching it becomes more feasible, or if I could eat my dinner while watching…
Would watching on a tablet count, too?
Meh. I think I’d sign on, but without great expectation I’d actually complete the project. Don’t see a downside to signing on as there is no penalty if I don’t finish. Good payoff if I do.
I’m with @Broomstick. I’d enjoy the music and fashions. 4900 of them is a lot though. Several separate paragraphs of ideas following, not meant as a coherent essay …
Assuming any / all cheating is detected and disqualifying, I’d bet that of every hundred people taking on this task only one or two successfully finish & get paid. So the OP can offer lots more payouts than they’ll need to deliver.
I’m only being paid ~$100 / hour to do this project. If I treated it like a full time job and diligently put 40 hours / week into it you’re talking 122 weeks or 2-1/2 years. Which is a decent fraction of what’s left of my vigorous years. Not worth it. For someone not yet retired, they probably don’t have time in their daily life for a second no-kidding full time job either.
The worst part IMO would be the “no breaks >7 days” part. That’s not real compatible with travel where you’re trying to disengage from your normal life and engage with something completely different.
I know this frustrates part of the OP’s point, but doing 1/5th of them for $100K is a lot more doable. They’d get more takers and have a much higher success rate.
Yeah, not going to do it either. I find watching lip-synching (which wasn’t completely universal on those shows, but was common) slightly annoying to begin with and people forget how much dreck made it in over the passage of time. I also don’t really particularly enjoy a.) dancing and b.) watching people dance. Dick Clark’s enthusiasm can grate (at least Don Cornelius had that mellow voice). This would be a chore for me, with moments of pleasure hearing a song I like interspersed with tedium.
I could certainly use $500k. It would be nice to to pay off my mortgage. But I’m aging and am more or less fiscally secure. It’s not worth the opportunity cost at this stage in my life to spend years on something I’ll only intermittently enjoy (mildly enjoy at best) and suffer through at worst, especially by a year or two into it. I’m retired for a reason - I don’t want another periodically pleasant/periodically annoying job.
Am I going to do something useful with that time instead? Fuck no. But I’d rather do the fuck-all I’d prefer for free, than get paid to do the fuck-all that would eventually start sucking.
Is there any penalty for trying and failing? Because on the one hand, I’m not sure that it’s worth all of those hours… but on the other hand, if there’s no penalty, then sure, I’ll take the deal, and maybe watch an hour or two here and there, and maybe finish before I die and get a nice windfall, or maybe not.
Sure, why not. I did various jobs including both ingoing and outgoing phone customer service [and a memorable 4 months working a demi-legal boiler room for a timeshare corporation, and phone survey for Virginia Pilot Ledger Star] so I could dedicate 8 hours a day/9 shows [they cut out the commercials, that knocks them down to 40 minutes per show, though I suppose make it 8 programs, and the chopped out 20 minutes of station identification and commercials one might do the 20 minutes as a break between shows] for the 122 weeks. Can’t be any worse than some of the corporate twaddle I would have to sit through. Heck, I could have knocked off 4 shows during chemo infusion and made money for ‘wasted time’
I’m willing, but realistically the boredom would be overpowering after 1-2 months. Especially since I’m psychologically primed from childhood to see these shows as the boring grown-up stuff that marks the end of Saturday morning cartoons. It was always the cue to shut off the TV. So even though I could really use the money, the boredom would be a serious challenge for me.
I think the Black music would keep me interested for quite a while because honestly I haven’t listened to it enough. I have a few strong favorites and many gaps, so I’d enjoy what’s familiar and learn a lot about what I haven’t heard. But American Bandstand would be a struggle as all of that stuff is very played out for me. White dance music that’s not played out, I find tends to be pretty boring. I think Bandstand would probably tank my effort.
I didn’t notice at the time I wrote my earlier comments, but it happens that I’ve actually been retired only a little longer than that. IOW, had I transitioned directly from working my career to watching these shows as a 40 hour/week job I’d have finished up and collected my $500K back wages a couple months ago.
Looking back over what I really did during that time interval, there’s no way I’d trade all that for sitting glued to a TV all day 5 days/week watching 1970s quality video. Even with the $500K spif.
Yeah, no. The Soul Train and Midnight Special part I could handle. Solid Gold, wasn’t that pretty much all disco? I’m not sure I could sit through 35+ years of AB. And the rate of pay isn’t worth it. Double it and I might think about it.
Last year I watched just about all of the episodes of Midnight Special that are on YouTube. Some really great music there. I especially enjoyed Dr. Hook:
At first I thought I’d say “Hell yes. I’d get a treadmill and knock out a couple episodes per day while getting my steps in, and while eating meals.”
but then I realized that even if I managed about 3 episodes per day, it would take upwards of 5 years. That’s a lot of boring meals and walks inside on an treadmill instead of outside with the dogs, so I might have to turn it down even though that’s a lot of money.
