America's BINGO Night! Seriously?!? (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

I watched 10 minutes of the new BINGO show the other night. Can someone confirm I'm understanding the show correctly:
* Player guesses whether a black or red bingo ball is randomly ejected.
* Audience actually plays bingo from said balls
* If player guesses 7 correct red/blacks before an audience member gets a BINGO, player withs beaucoup cash.
* Occaisionally, Tatoo from Fantasy Island yells out "No Bingo!"

??? ???

That's the game? Guess heads/tails on coin tosses to win $50k?

 

[TonyD]

i only caught a few minutes too, but what i saw was the player needs to get to 500 points before a bingo.
he adds up the number on the balls to get to 500.
again like you only caught a few minutes so we must have missed something.
actually, i dont think we missed anything.

it looked like super low budget british cast off game show.

also there's this


http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...d.php?t=256480

 

[Todd Henry]

There were three different "games" played by the contestant while others played bingo. The first was the race to 500, one was odds/evens and the other was red/black.

 

[Malcolm R]

It's no more inane or ridiculous than watching morons pick suitcases at random. People seem to be falling all over themselves to watch that show.

For myself, paint drying is more entertaining (and probably takes more skill).

But apparently we've grown too stupid as a society to expect our game shows to actually challenge their contestants with actual games that require a little bit of skill or knowledge.

 

[MatthewA]

I'd save that statement while Jeopardy is still running.

 

[Malcolm R]

I was generally speaking of this "new" wave of game shows. Though even "Jeopardy" seems to have "dumbed down" a bit over recent years.

 

[DaveF]

I thought Deal or No Deal was a dumb idea, to my surprise it's a fun game to watch. And unlike what I saw of Bingo, DOND requires the player to make real decisions, unlike black/red of Bingo. And watching DOND with some knowledge of probability makes it more fun: watching people make risk assessments with little knowledge, and gauging when to push on with the odds favor your, as well as trying to guess the Banker's offer.

In any case, it's not like game shows have a particularly erudite history: Joker's Wild, Price is Right, and Family Feud didn't require the knowledge of Jeapordy. But they are fun games.

Bingo just seems like dreck.

But clearly I missed most of the show. The piece I saw had a woman guessing red/black and as she got it right, a manniquin bride moved down her mechanical aisle to get married. If she got seven points, the player won $50k.

How did the rest of the show go?

 

[Jonny P]

The new breed of game shows (I am pointing at "Deal or No Deal") require little to no brain power.

Instead, they are based on luck and the shows subsist on people making dumb decisions.

It is like the TV version of watching someone put tokens into a slot machine.

 

[Todd Henry]

She was the only person who won the 50k. She did get a great roll that prevented anyone from the audience from getting close. But if normal probabilities hold, they would've probably pulled about 14 numbers before she won the prize. That would have given people enough time to come close or to get BINGO. It is that drama when you have a group of players one number away and the person also one correct guess away that creates the entertainment. If a person gets bingo on the same turn as the contestant, then the player losses.

My wife and I enjoyed it and it was fun to play along. In a couple of the games we were one number away from BINGO. The prizes for home contestants weren't great, but one home winner won a trip to the Indy 500. For a Friday night at home, it wasn't the worst thing we could've done.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

These new game shows are about watching entertaining contestants, not about playing interesting games.

Don't be dissin' The Price Is Right -- the unofficial game show of the HTF!

It's designed for geniuses. Handsome geniuses.

 

[LarryDavenport]

The next big game show? Guess Which Hand It's In.

 

[DaveF]

I'd never diss TPIR -- rather observing that great game shows don't need "smarts". Just a good game and with fun decisions, requring a bit of savvy or chutzpah, to be made by the player.

That's what annoyed me so much about Bingo -- there was seemingly no fun decision making process. Red?Black?Red?Black?Heads?Tails? At least with Deal, there's the decision of whether to quit the game with your current prize money or keep going for more. Bingo was just mindless guessing until the game ended.

 

[MishaLauenstein]

Oh! My! God! You've just given me a brilliant idea! Celebrity Slots!

Get FOX and Greg Evigan on the phone!

 

[Scott_J]

I thought you said "celebrity."

 

[DaveF]

At a minimum, they could have copied the other shows with a sliding prize scale, and offering the player the choice to leave with a partial win or continue on to go for all of it.

They could show the audience players closest to Bingo, so the player could know how far off they are from winning.

They could could make the selection of Bingo Balls partially skill based, so the player has some chance at selecting the ball they want (that's what I thought they did at first).

There's a lot to be done that might juice up the game and make it more interesting.

 

[Malcolm R]

They did make the audience members stand up when they were "one number away" from bingo.

I don't know if a sliding scale would work with this set up, since the whole point of "bingo night" is to let the audience in the studio and at home play bingo. The "contestant" is just a glorified number puller; the game is not really about them. If they were able to quit early for a smaller prize, there would seldom be enough draws to let anyone win at the bingo game and there wouldn't be any point in the audience playing along.

 

[Chris]

Do we get to watch while the audience hair turns blue?

 

[DaveF]

How does playing at home work? Can you really win? Do you call in and claim a prize? Does it affect the Player?

As for quitting early -- DOND demonstrates that people will stick with the game far longer than they should, for the allure of substantially larger prizes. Appropriately value-staggered prizes will keep the players going for it.

 

[Todd Henry]

You can play at home by going to abc.com and printing out bingo cards. You get three cards for each game every time you print. If you get bingo at home, you claim your prize on line and one lucky winner in each game gets a big prize, like a $10,000 gift or trip to Indy 500. All Other winners got $5 gift card from K-Mart or a CD.

 

[Malcolm R]

What Todd said, plus at-home play has no effect on the in-studio action (for one thing, it's not a "live" show).