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 with Chris Wolvie |
| Power
of 10 "Play the Percentages" To The Logical Extreme |
I'm
Drew Carey and welcome to the… SHOW:
Power of 10AIR DATES: August 7, 2007 to January 23, 2008 CREATOR: Embassy Row PACKAGER: Sony Pictures Television HOST: Drew Carey WATCH IT HERE: YouTube NOW we're getting into big money territory. CBS went all around the country and asked Americans a wide variety of questions, from "In everyday life, are teenage boys or teenage girls meaner?" to "Have you ever been decapitated?" The votes were tallied and made into percentiles and contestants were brought in to try to guess what percentage said so-and-so about said questions. And the stakes? Not one million...not two million...but TEN MILLION DOLLARS! To get that far, you didn't even have to get it right on; you get close enough you could chose to leave a millionaire. That's the "Power of 10"...and this was, for all intents and purposes, Drew Carey's final audition to take over the reins of "The Price Is Right" with Bob Barker exiting in 2008. If he did well in THIS CBS show, he would take over the MAIN CBS show. Obviously, it worked. But, while the show was interesting, the difficulty to get the top prize (or even get CLOSE to it) was its downfall. HOW WAS IT PLAYED? PRE-GAME Two contestants go face-to-face in a best-out-of-five match. The host asks a question based on a nationwide poll and each contestant chooses what percentage of those polled said the answer given. Whoever is closer to the correct percentage gets a point. First to three points gets to play for money. MAIN GAMEPLAY The contestant is asked a question based on another poll. They are given a 41% "range" (such as from 0% to 40%) to work with and is asked to put said range where they feel the right percentage of Americans answered the question. They can put it at a certain amount at first and, after seeing how the studio audience votes and/or how a friend or family member they brought feels, they can adjust the range before locking in. Once locked, the range cannot be moved. If the correct percentage is within the range, the contestant gets $1000 in their bank. The second question has a 31% range for a different question, the third a 21% range and the fourth an 11% range. Getting each one right multiplies the bank by ten ($10,000 to $100,000 to $1,000,000). Getting any answer wrong ends the game and the bank is DIVIDED by ten (if they miss one of the first two questions, they get nothing). They can choose to quit at any time BEFORE locking in an answer (just like "Millionaire"). If the contestant gets the range of the fourth question right, the final question for $10,000,000 is to pick which of the 11 percentages in the range is the EXACT percentage answer to that question. Again, they can quit with the $1,000,000 already in the bank BEFORE locking their answer in. If they lock it in and get it right, they leave with $10 million; otherwise, they leave with $100,000. WHAT WORKED? The set seemed very much like a mix between what "Millionaire" is now and what it was in the beginning. A couple of monitors, a large screen to show the amount in play and the audience votes, said audience surrounding the host and contestant. It did have a "big money" feel to it without being TOO ostentatious. We ALL knew this was a "dry run" for Drew Carey on CBS. The higher-ups wanted to see how he reacts with regular people instead of celebrities as he did on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?". Not sure what the heck happened between this show and when he started hosting "Price is Right"; he did a pretty good job here. He kept the tension JUST right and reveled in the contestants' victories almost as much as the contestants did. Where did that go once he took Barker's job? WHAT DIDN'T WORK? To even get to ONE million was hard as hell. I know that was the point; "Millionaire" wouldn't be half as riveting if it was dirt-easy to get that seven-figure check. But it seemed obvious that those on this show weren't as sharp as "Millionaire" contestants. Many of the contestants couldn't get past the third question...and, of the few that did, only ONE got the one million...and he was the VERY FIRST CONTESTANT! If you can't follow up that with at least another $1M winner, you KNOW you flamed out too fast. And I'm all for different takes on "Family Feud" and, while this was the most interesting take on it, it's what MADE the questions the most difficult. And, much like the "Ask the Audience" on "Millionaire", those polls of the audience and NOT the best at helping out, even if they ARE limitless. Bottom line is this show was really all luck...and hardly anyone was lucky enough to make a dent in CBS' wallet. It's nitpicking, I know, but that display with the "magnifying glass" look at the percentages got a bit annoying after a while. WOULD IT WORK TODAY? Many different countries had their own versions of the show; that's something you normally see in a UK-based show, not a US-based show. However, none of them lasted too long; only Vietnam's version got two years out of it. So, yeah, another "nice try". Though I wish it could be brought back so Drew can get his charisma back so he can stop faking it. NEXT TIME: WELCOME TO...GAME SHOW...IS...JERICHO-O-O-O! Chris Wolvie would be happy with the power of 1/1000 of what Drew seems to have lately. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisWolvie and e-mail him at chriswolvie@yahoo.com. |
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