I watched around 125 shows & that number pattern shows up more than it does not.
Also, its kind of weird when you think about some of the questions that guys won $1M. HEre are two of the early US ones:
What is the approx distance from earth to the sun?
A: 93M miles (duh) The guy, an astronomer, had to think of this one for a bit.
What president once appeared on Laugh-In?
A; Nixon (duh) guy called his father on this one & said Hi.
Just a note, AFAIK, it’s illegal to rig a quiz show in the U.S. (the law was passed in the 50s, after the scandals). The producers would be crazy to risk it, not only in terms of fines and other penalties, but if the word of any rigging got out (and it’d get out pretty damn fast), the show would be off the air in an instant. Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
You people aren’t much help at all, in addition to being some of the most earnest people I’ve ever come into contact with. As for the notions that contestants are somehow “gifted” or “driven” (thus lowering the sample size? HA! I’m surprized some contestants were able to operate a telephone in order to participate), that networks are somehow afraid to rig a show (no, we made that mistake in the 50’s and were made to pay dearly?), that the fast-food tie-in campaign is not a MAJOR coincidence (what was it Chomksy said about labelling things as “conspiracy theories”?), all I can say is that those ARE definitely opinions!
Eunoia- you do me a grave injustice! I’d LOVE to believe that “Who Wants to BE a Millionaire” is rigged- that way, it wouldn’t be MY fault that I didn’t make it to the hot seat! I’d LOVE to believe that the reason I didn’t make it was that ABC fixed the machines to put somebody else on instead of me! But it’s not true!
What’s more, IF a television network wanted to rig a show and have somebody win the million bucks, it DEFINITELY wouldn’t be the boring, stiff, nerdy, middle-aged white guys who’ve usually appeared! Television networks HATE having older viewers! They want YOUNG viewers, because that’s the audience advertisers look for.
IF they were going to rig the show, they’d rig it so some younger, cooler, more attractive contestants won.
If the people at home don’t know how well any given contestant is going to do ahead of time, how does airing a winner raise ratings?
Achernar - “If the people at home don’t know how well any given contestant is going to do ahead of time, how does airing a winner raise ratings?”
It was in the national newspapers in Britain (front page headlines in the tabloids) that the woman was going to win before the show was aired.
I’m sorry astorian, nice to see someone with a sense of humour though. I’m not sure that having geeky guys win isn’t an advantage. It works to weaken my theory. When those guys bring their mom to the show, though… (Disclaimer: I love you mom, just wouldn’t bring you to New York)
Archenar: When people win a million dollars (or more), people talk about it. This may not help ratings for that show, but subsequent ones should benefit. Also I watched winner #4 win because my dad told me that there was going to be a big winner “if not tonight, this week”. The source of the “leak” would probably be Live! with Regis and X.
Thanks eunoia, that makes sense, but I guess I meant to ask, if airing the winners were a ploy to boost ratings at a certain time, then why wouldn’t they publicize it like, apparently, they do in Britain?
Since the shows are sequential, as mentioned by ElvisL1ves, they can’t air winners when they please. It seems that they did pre-publicize the last winner and my guess is that they will do so more aggressively in the future (I called it a “leak” ironically, but it was obvious publicity, whatever the source, especially if it was Regis’ other show). My question remains: By any or all the means at producers’ disposal, do they take steps to ensure/avoid that there will be winners at certain times? Can it be proven statistically beyond the empirical evidence? As to whether this would be right or wrong, legal or illegal, we should adjourn to another forum.
Since the shows are sequential, as mentioned by ElvisL1ves, they can’t air winners when they please. It seems that they did pre-publicize the last winner and my guess is that they will do so more aggressively in the future (I called it a “leak” ironically, but it was obvious publicity, whatever the source, especially if it was Regis’ other show). My question remains: By any or all the means at producers’ disposal, do they take steps to ensure/avoid that there will be winners at certain times? Can it be proven statistically beyond the empirical evidence? As to whether this would be right or wrong, legal or illegal, we should adjourn to another forum.
Two points:
Recently Britain had its second winner. This information leaked out about ten days before the broadcast (?purposefully) but usually the shows are recorded only a few days in advance (you can tell by the date changes for telephoning in between different sorts of shows- singles or couples). When it was broadcast it was on Saturday night- in Britain one of the Ratings War nights. What a surprise!
It would only take a mild easing of the difficulty of questions to greatly increase the probability of a winner. Sufficient to say that none of the series of questions that led to the million pound wins gave me any great problems, whereas often there are questions at the £100 000 and above level that are real stumpers.
To enable a win or avoid a win all they would have to do is to have two classes of questions above £100 000- reasonably difficult and very difficult. Avoiding very difficult questions would increase the odds greatly. Given the ability to manipulate transmission date (some shows do not pre-select the next contestant and so would allow shows to be run non-sequentially) together with the above would allow shows to be scheduled to run on particular nights.
I think that they did publicize the last two top prize winners.
At least, I remember hearing that they were going to win before they actually won.
There was another winner last week? Aw sucks, I missed it…
I don’t think the game is rigged, although I noticed they have really dumbed down the questions up to the $32K level. I play along at home and normally can get up to the $125-250K easily, meaning I know the answers or am convinced that the audience and/or phone a friend would have known the answer. I really need to get on that show.
handy: You’re right about the Nixon question (that Carpenter guy was one smart cookie, and smug and conceited as well), but the 93 million miles to the sun wasn’t a million dollar question, though. I did nearly piss myself when the guy who won the $2M+ jackpot got as the $500,000 question, “What is the circumference of the Earth at the equator?” Plus I knew the first million dollar question asked, “What artist won the first hard rock/heavy metal Grammy?” He didn’t know it. (Hint: it’s NOT Metallica!)
The two jackpot winners who knew each other doesn’t surprise me at all. If the show were rigged, no way would they have tried to pull that off…
Mahaloth said:
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Are you referring to when the show first started?
Because I did find that … interesting.
No one could reach the $1 million plateau for some time. Then, near the end of the run for the first series of shows, a guy breezed to the million (remember? He used his phone-a-friend on the last question, just to let his parents know he was going to win).
For whatever this unscientific evidence is worth - prior to that time, I (who am better-than-average at trivia, but certainly nothing to write home about) would invariably get stumped playing along with every round. When that guy won, like him, I breezed through the questions, and also would have never had to use even a 50-50 or Ask the Audience. People I was watching with all remarked it seemed easier than some sets of questions had been, especially at the higher money levels.
I agree with Milossarian, no proof, but a really strong gut feeling. I’m no astorian, but I play NTN decently, heh heh.