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UnevenEdge

A thread about something no one has cared about for like two decades


Doom Metal Alchemist

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Remember the "reality TV" show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, hosted by Regis Philben? It always bugged me how it was marketed as reality TV. It's a fucking game show, we had those for decades before the term "reality TV" was coined. If this show is a reality show, so is fucking Jeopardy. All it is is answering trivia questions. Literally text book definition of game show.

Anyway, aside from that mini-rant, I think I figured out why it was such a huge hit at first and why people stopped caring so quickly. All game shows before it, the music was always light-hearted and cheery. But Who Wants to Be a Millionaire tried something different. The music was dramatic and tense. This dramatic music gave a false sense of suspense and had people on the edge of their seats for people's rambling trains of thought trying to arrive at an answer to a trivia question. This caused the popularity of the show to explode.

And I think the show ended up burning out, in part because of over-exposure, but also in part because people realized, "Hey, this isn't dramatic and suspenseful, just the music is."

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16 hours ago, Doom Metal Alchemist said:

Remember the "reality TV" show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, hosted by Regis Philben? It always bugged me how it was marketed as reality TV. It's a fucking game show, we had those for decades before the term "reality TV" was coined. If this show is a reality show, so is fucking Jeopardy. All it is is answering trivia questions. Literally text book definition of game show.

Anyway, aside from that mini-rant, I think I figured out why it was such a huge hit at first and why people stopped caring so quickly. All game shows before it, the music was always light-hearted and cheery. But Who Wants to Be a Millionaire tried something different. The music was dramatic and tense. This dramatic music gave a false sense of suspense and had people on the edge of their seats for people's rambling trains of thought trying to arrive at an answer to a trivia question. This caused the popularity of the show to explode.

And I think the show ended up burning out, in part because of over-exposure, but also in part because people realized, "Hey, this isn't dramatic and suspenseful, just the music is."

weird, i was thinking this plot

in the sense that regis was to mind fvck everyone in some way

and you know what, it was the million dollars and the one chance per lifetime

the difficulty of the questions

and sex.  pure rosy palmed sex.

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It definitely burned out

Nothing can capture the simplicity of Jeopardy, and I think that's because every quiz show since has tried to outdo the previous one with flair and drama, when all viewers really care about in a quiz show is seeing the questions and getting to play along at home.

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"Millionaire" was trash without Regis, even though it was trash anyway.  And a million now isn't shit compared to back then.  People don't have the same attention span for game shows, which is probably why millionaire got lumped in with "reality tv" alongside surivior and big brother and snuff films or whatever.

Shit like that jeff foxworthy game show, or family feud was still popular because it gave way more chances for people to embarrass themselves.  But even that gets old, how many old black ladies talking about dicks and making steve harvey blush before it's not funny anymore?  And fuck jeff foxworthy, his speech is probably carcinogenic.

It's not a bad premise for a quiz show, but like you said, the drama and bullshit is all manufactured, and what it comes down to is fake suspense, because some of the questions are stupid easy, and the drawn out "DUN DUN DUNUUUUNNUNUNDNDNUND" wears thin

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