All The Tropes

Phone-In Game Show: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Phone-In Game Show (view source)

Revision as of 20:05, 16 August 2017

2 bytes added ,  6 years ago
work->trope, tropelist->examples, added categories
VisualWikitext
m (revise quote template spacing)
(work->trope, tropelist->examples, added categories)
Line 1:
{{worktrope}}
{{quote|''Come on! You only have 60 seconds left to call in for a shot at $100! All you have to do is unscramble this famous thing! "TVTORPES"! Keep ringing those phones! We don't have all night! Call! Call now! <ref>Call costs $100 a minute, 18+ only, many will enter, very few will have a bloody chance.</ref>''}}
 
A phone[[Phone-inIn gameGame showShow]] is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. It is a logical extension of the concept of a [[Home Participation Sweepstakes]], except in this case, the ''whole'' show is one. These are a form of live [[Game Show]] where viewers can call in to a special number and hopefully get a chance to come on air to potentially win something by providing an answer to a question or logic puzzle. They were quite popular in Europe as a fixture of late-night television on commercial television channels, and even on dedicated ''quiz channels'' that dedicated their lineup to ''just'' this genre. If done right, they can at least be [[Rule of Fun|fun to watch]], and leave you wondering if you should even phone in and give it a shot yourself!
 
Despite the allure these programs have to viewers, they're not without controversy. But why, you ask? The idea of a phone-in game show is pretty much a trope on its own, because practically every single phone-in quiz show on Earth follows the exact same series of events:
Line 17:
 
To note, there are far too many of these shows to count, so this page will mainly be general to the genre since they're all rather similar.
 
----
=== {{examples|Okay, you're on the air! Name us [[Game Show Tropes|a trope relating to this type of show]], one of them on the prize board is hiding $5,000! ===}}
* [[Bonus Round]]: Some of these shows offered bonus games to win jackpot prizes.
* [[Carried by the Host|Carried by the Hosts]]: It's a given, since we're often dealing with cheap, late-night entertainment here.
Line 31:
** During the British phone-in scandals, one complaint surfaced involving a show which named "rawlplugs" (a piece of hardware used to anchor a screw into a drywall or plaster wall) and "balaclava" as items a woman would keep in her handbag. Seriously?
 
=== {{tropelist|Oh, time's up! Here's what was behind the money on the TropeBoard! ===}}▼
----
▲=== Oh, time's up! Here's what was behind the money on the TropeBoard! ===
* [[Easier Than Easy]]/[[Harder Than Hard]]: In layman's terms: if the questions are easy, politicians will call it gambling. If the questions are hard, politicians will call it a scam.
* [[Luck-Based Mission]]: It feels like one, but we can legally prove that it's not!
* [[One-Episode Wonder]]: ''The Debbie King Show'', aired by ITV Play, was a cross between a phone-in quiz and a news programme. Hosted by QuizMania's Debbie King, they still decided to go on with the show, even though ITV had announced earlier that day that the Play channel would be "suspended" as part of investigations into their use of premium-rate lines. [[Sarcasm Mode|Whoops.]]
* [[Screwed by the Network]]: The 0898-gate scandals caused almost every single phone-in quiz game on-air in the United Kingdom to get affected in some way. Quite a few of them got either put on hiatus or cancelled.
 
----
{{quote|...oh I'm so sorry, the answer we were looking for was "Vest Port", popular retailer of sweatervests!}}
}}
 
{{reflist}}
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1544528"