Get in the game!
by Terry Borst
Once upon a time, playing along with your favorite television game show meant you blurted out the answer (in the form of a question, please!) before the contestant did.
If you were lucky, playing along meant Santa Claus had brought you the "Home Version" of the game show: a typically cheesy board game the producers also "awarded" to the losers.
However, if the Game Show Network (GSN) is in your channel line-up, you can now really play along -- competing with other viewers, for real prizes.
And if you've got AOLTV, UltimateTV, WebTVPlus, or a Liberate set-top box (part of the enhanced digital programming package offered by numerous cable and satellite operators), you're able to do it all exclusively on your television set, using your remote control or wireless keyboard. (See sidebar on the difference between 1-screen and 2-screen interactivity.)
True to its motto "Play All Day!", GSN offers round-the-clock game show programming, and according to Vice President of Programming Kristin Peace, "Fully a quarter of that programming is original game show content." She goes on to say that a growing number of the shows offer real-time interactivity to viewers.
"What's unique about GSN is that interactivity is so completely organic to game shows," says Peace. "Everyone already understands how it works. Everyone likes to play along."
GSN's Hollywood Showdown is a perfect example of how it all works. Todd Newton (a regular on the E! Channel) hosts the brisk half-hour show, which focuses on entertainment and pop culture questions. Contestants answer multiple-choice questions, score points, and add cash to the Box Office jackpot that builds throughout the episode.
While you can enjoy the broadcast solely as a spectator (and many do), those with either 1-screen or 2-screen interactive connectivity can answer the same questions at the same time as their onscreen counterparts.
On WebTVPlus, AOLTV, UltimateTV or Liberate, this means selecting the translucent "i" that appears in the upper right corner of the screen, and then selecting "Go Interactive" from the brief menu. Instructions then appear at the bottom of the screen, and when you're ready, you can select "OK" to begin playing.
Interactive players earn their own points, which appear onscreen. At the end of the show, they submit their scores to be rated against other at-home participants. Each night, GSN ranks the high scores nationally and also by state, and players can easily check those scores via any Internet-enabled device. Players with the best at-home scores enter into sweepstakes awarding cash and vacation prizes.
Obviously, the more you play, and the better you get, the more likely you might win.
Mall Masters is another original game show offering real-time interactivity. The show first polls shoppers in the Mall of the Americas, asking about everything from favorite pizza toppings to worst sorts of embarrassments on a date. On-air contestants then try to guess shoppers' answers in a multiple-choice format, and the interactive viewer gets a crack at the same questions, competing against other home viewers for points and prizes.
For some of us, relationship-driven shows were always the most entertaining game shows. If you ever watched The Dating Game, there were a couple of things you probably did: you'd guess which bachelorette would get picked, and you'd wonder what planet that contestant came from.
While GSN has not updated The Dating Game yet, it has revived an old favorite. Game show legend Chuck Barris created the original Three's a Crowd, which asked whether a wife or a secretary really knew a man better. GSN's All New Three's a Crowd (hosted by Alan Thicke of the sitcom Growing Pains) pushes the concept further, combining a woman with an ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend, or a guy with his wife and mother, in exploring intimate relationships and seeing who knows what.
Want to know more about that ex-boyfriend or current boyfriend? Want the full bio on the wife? All that information is now available via an onscreen menu.
This time, interactive viewers compete against each other in prediction games, where they rack up points for prizes. Which threesome will score the most points before the commercial break? Which threesome will win the game?
You'd be forgiven for thinking that classic episodes of The $100,000 Pyramid (hosted by Dick Clark) would give your game-playing thumb a rest finally. After all, this game show would actually flash the answers onscreen to the home-viewing audience! So guessing those answers would not be much of a contest.
But GSN has again added a prediction game for real-time viewer interactivity. Will it be Hal Linden's team or Bea Arthur's team that advances to the pyramid? Will Linden's team get this question right, or not?
Currently, only one viewer at a time can actually play on an individual television (which doesn't stop the rest of your family from jeering at you if you miss an answer). However, many of GSN's shows allow you to register multiple user names for a household (the interactive onscreen instructions will tell you how). This permits the kids (or your Significant Other) to compete for cash prizes under their own names.
In addition, compulsive channel-surfers should know that the point counter will re-set itself if you click to another network between questions. So if you're truly competing for more than the sheer glory and fun of it, be sure to stay with the game for the full half hour!
GSN has not yet outfitted every show with full, real-time digital interactivity. But programming VP Peace says that is the ultimate goal, and will soon be achieved.
An example of partial real-time interactivity is WinTV, a repackaging of old To Tell the Truth and The Price is Right episodes that GSN couples with an interactive multiple-choice trivia game. Questions often (but not always) relate to specific content on the show. Viewers again compete with other simultaneous viewers for high scores and sweepstakes prizes.
At other times, the available interactivity has no direct connection at all with the show. For example, when GSN airs classic episodes of The Match Game and Beat the Clock, digitally-enabled players can still select some sort of game play: trivia games, word games, onscreen blackjack, and more.
But with GSN now entering over 30 million homes, and digital set-top devices proliferating, the network's future programming emphasis is almost exclusively on original game shows built from the ground up with real-time, viewer-involving, interactive game play of a type never before possible.
"Our current programming push reflects our desire to expand the genre of game shows," says Peace. One example is an interactive dating show GSN is developing with match.com. Viewer interactivity is likely to include some kind of Love Connection audience voting (and predictions on the outcomes), as well as the ability to view video bios of potential daters, and a chance to vote on who the next date might be. Live match.com chat might also be incorporated into the show.
Other planned shows revolve around storytelling contests, hip-hop microphone showdowns, and a Survivor-like reality component pitting contestants against each other as they live for weeks on top of billboards across the country.
Home audience competitions, viewer game play and other kinds of interactivity will be integrated into all of these shows.
While GSN has not yet moved in this direction, how long will it be before we take for granted full, two-way interactivity -- where game shows produced and broadcast live fully incorporate at-home contestants into the structure of the on-air entertainment?
Interactive TV is already here, and one of its most natural and easy-to-use applications is the programming found on the Game Show Network.
For those of you who have been sitting on the interactive TV fence, wondering if an investment in AOLTV, UltimateTV or other digitally enhanced broadcast service is worth it, this may be reason enough to make the plunge -- a great new way to involve the entire family in an evening's fun.
For those of you who already have GSN, but haven't looked into all it offers -- why are you standing on the sidelines? Get in the game!