What brought this to mind was tonight’s episode of Celebrity Family Feud. These various “celebrities” play against each other for various charities, so you would think that they would try to earn as much money as possible for the charity they are playing for, right? Not so much if the two teams are made up comedians(Male vs. Female).
On “Family Feud” the purpose is to match your answers to the answers an anonymous polled selection of people, but these posers thought if was a game of “Can You Top This?”-most of their answers were played for laughs or outrageousness. Sample question: “something you use as a last resort when you run out of toilet paper”, and John Gemberling said “squirrel”. I don’t know what charity he was playing for, but I bet they had a good laugh at that losing answer.
In the second half the show the two teams was singer Christina Milian and her family against former “Celebrity Family Feud” host Louie Anderson and his family. Christina and her family actually tried to play it straight, but Louie Anderson? Here we have a game where you have to give in answer within five seconds or get buzzed, but Louie refused to break character and did his long pause followed by slow drawn out meandering bit every fucking time. I don’t think he was able to get a word out(let alone an entire answer) any time his turn came up.
Thanks for the effort, comedians. :rolleyes:
they get something for the charity win or lose just a lesser amount for the “loss”
Usually true, but if the “celebrity” isn’t going to make an honest effort to win, then she or he should tell that charity beforehand that this is being done primarily for self-promotion.
Is the celebrity “hired” by the charity? Usually they pick it themselves.
Lots of these go to where both charities get the same amount, just that the losing celeb has to pay their share.
I have never heard of a deal like this, where the losing celeb agrees to make up the difference. Cite?
I mean, I’ve certainly heard it before in celebrity game shows, but I’m not going to dig up a whole bunch of random game shows until I find one.
You did say it happens “lots” of times. Shouldn’t be too much trouble to find just one.
Perhaps the charities care more about the exposure and good will from an entertaining show than the difference that comedians produce in the show winnings.
I dunno about Family Feud, but for many of these celebrity charity shows, the actual amount being donated is well in excess of the normal amount earned on the show, and they’re only playing for which place they come in (assuming the places have different amounts).
For example, I believe (and I’ll willing to be proven wrong as I’m going from memory) the last celebrity jeopardy was giving away amounts of $100k, $50k, and $25k to the player’s charities. Getting an amount over $25k in a normal game is relatively rare, so those charities are getting more than whatever the celeb would have earned anyway.
I would assume the same case is true here, either all charities get the same amount regardless of the scores, or the amount is much higher than the total earned.
From Wiki we get this info about Celebrity Family Feud:
I can’t seem to find out if/how much the celebs get paid.
One of the most infuriating examples of this was Paula Poundstone on Celebrity Jeopardy some years ago. I can’t remember who the other celebrities were- I think Kelsey Grammer was one- but they were both ready to clobber her for not only making nothing for her own charity but sabotaging their answers. (I like her in Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, but I think Jeopardy was during her drinking days.)
Do they still have Celebrity Jeopardy, btw? Long before it became a recurring SNL sketch it was already funny for how dumbed down the questions were from an average week and how few most of the contestants could answer. (There were exceptions: I remember Luke Perry and Cheech Marin as both coming across as bright enough to play the real game.)
Did you happen to catch Wolf Blitzer on Celebrity Jeopardy? Fucking embarrassing.
The primary purpose of game shows is entertainment, not the funding of charitable causes. People watch comedians on them because they’re funny. The charitable donation is there so that the celebrities don’t look like they’re grubbing for a few thousand dollars like plebes.
Should we be equally annoyed at those comedians because they spend their time making jokes on a stage and not feeding the sick or clothing the hungry?
The most baffling part of this entire scenario is that anyone would consider Louie Anderson entertaining enough to put on TV.
mmm
Michael McKeon and David Duchovny also excelled at the game.
Most celebrities on Match Game weren’t concerned about matching answers with the contestants. They went for the joke answer every time.
Richard Dawson was the rare exception. He really tried to give the most easily matched answer. All the contestants picked Richard for the final round.
The only celebrity game show I’ve seen is Celebrity Jeopardy, and that was because I had a community living client who loved Jeopardy. Anyway, I remember that back at the time I saw it (which was in the 1990s), the charity was guaranteed $2,000, no matter what the celebrity won, but if the celebrity who won the game did so by more than $2,000, the charity got that amount. Mike Farrell was on once, and he was trying to play like an actual contestant, but the other two were just awful. Farrell did in fact win, and won something tidy for his charity (like $12,000); one of the other players ended up deep in the negative, but his charity still got $2,000. Farrell looked so painfully embarrassed, he looked like he was having a worse time than Alex Trebek, who clearly hates *Celebrity Jeopardy.
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I love the SNL spoofs of Celebrity Jeopardy. They are barely exaggerated, and especially true to Alex. They have him say everything you know he is thinking.
Most of the CJs I’ve seen, even the winner barely clears $2,000.
I think CJ is a sort of “shark jumping” stunt: an attempt to pull a stunt to bring in new viewers periodically. It doesn’t signal the decline of the show, like shark-jumping usually does, but I think it’s definitely at attempt to bring in non-regular viewers, and hope a few stick. All of the special tournaments-- the high school and college tournaments-- are like that to an extent as well.
They are entertainers. Ultimately, the show’s real responsibility is to its advertisers. They are the ones that make the whole thing possible, or there’d be no money to give to the charities in the first place. And advertisers need the show to be entertaining to viewers, in order to produce the necessary ratings. You seem to be missing this fundamental aspect of the whole thing.