Tuesday, December 21, 2010
YOU DON'T HAVE THESE PROBLEMS ON DEAL OR NO DEAL: I didn't watch Million Dollar Money Drop last night (nor, based on the ratings numbers, did many other people), but apparently, Fox screwed up one of the answers, leading to contestants losing $880K. As a general rule, contestants on these sorts of shows have to sign a release saying that the producers have the final say on whether an answer is right or wrong and you have no appeal from that, but shows have often admitted error, either during a taping (Jeopardy! regularly has credited contestants with additional money during the game, with explanation from Alex) or afterwards (Millionaire has invited contestants back to continue playing when a question has been proven to be ambiguous), to avoid bad publicity. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
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I watched a few minutes of the show last night, but while the game mechanics are kind of cool, watching two minutes of "logic" about whether Bayer Aspirin or Band-Aid Bandages or Nyquil hit the market first was not very entertaining.
ReplyDeleteThe thing of this show is that unless you happen to know the answer, there are always two pretty reasonable answers and the others are fairly obvious throw-away ones. Nyquil one can reasonably dump and while I would have bet the wad on Aspirin, I'd have very much hedged between Post-It and Walkman.
<span>the producers stand by their answer: http://tinyurl.com/22rum4g</span>
ReplyDelete“... our research team spoke directly with 3M, and they confirmed that although they had given out free samples in test markets in 1977 and 1978, it wasn’t until 1980 that Post-Its were sold in stores"<span></span>
I happened to have my TV on Fox when this came on the other night, and caught the first few minutes. The first question was "What is the most likely roll in craps: 4, 7, 10, or 12?" The couple really struggled over this question, and ended up putting most of their money on 10, and a little bit on 7. I was gleefully waiting for the trap door to spring open, when to my irritation, they were given the chance to reconsider and move their money. They ended up coming to their senses and moving almost all of it over to 7, but their "logic" for doing so was based on the rules of craps, as if the likelihood of rolling a particular number depends on what game you are playing. Having had my quota of stupidity for the evening, I switched channels, never to return.
ReplyDeletenow the producers blame it on 3M and give the contestants another chance.
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/2fx8vdz