All of the commercial free-to-air TV stations here are now running this type of show in the hours after midnight. A bunch of smallish prizes ($100 to $1000) are offered for callers who guess an item from a list of songs or films or complete a simple word puzzle. Callers are charged about half a buck a time. The “games” are shamelessly stretched - the idea presumably being that enough bored borderline problem gamblers will spend enough on phone calls to cover production costs and hardly any prizes have to be won. The sound effects are highly reminiscent of low-stakes poker machines.
The wikipedia article for one of them says it is based on a UK “show” of the same name. Is that the same sort of thing? Is this kind of thing airing elsewhere? Have regulators stepped in to stop these “shows”?
GSN is doing the same thing here, but I think only on weekend nights. I watched it once, and used the website to try to enter (because I didn’t want to pay the extortion fee for a text message), but I guess I didn’t get picked.
Have no idea where these shows originated, but in Norway two of the commercial television stations started broadcastings like this about three years ago.
Running from around 3AM to 11AM every day it is cheap, dumb television that apparently makes a truckload of money from people spending the entire night mindlessly sending in text messages (about 1.3$ a pop in Norway). It’s not only contests either, there is a chat going on as well. And the hosts usually pose “engaging” questions throughout the night to get viewer input. (And the viewers money)
With contests like “I’m thinking of a movie - guess which one” with no hints it’s no surprise they rake in ,as there are a few thousand to choose from
